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Blended Families
Spin off of "Seems Unfair to Me"
Mrs.Garciatobe"s post got me thinking. In my situation, DH has full custody of SD and she has always lived with us. BM is not in SD's life. BM is suppose to pay child support but she never has. DH and I have had a bad year! I was laid off in May of last year and he was in October. We both have jobs now and I just got a promotion so things are looking up, but it is still tight because we are not making the income we use to. DH let the state know that BM has not been paying and the case worker or whatever she is that he spoke with said to him, "You want to take money from a single mother?" Is that any of her business? Isn't her job to enforce the court order? BM has another child but I am not sure if the other child's father pays child support or not, but isn't that irrelevant? The court ordered BM to pay CS for SD so shouldn't she? SD is her responsibility, I think that is only fair. DH would never have bothered with it but like I said, money has been tight in our house and SD wants to take an art class that we just can not afford right now, CS from biomom could pay for this.
It seems like their is a double standard when it comes to which parent has to pay child support. It is not fair that the system does not want to go after the women.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Spin off of "Seems Unfair to Me"
Thank you, that is exactly my point! If SO girls lived with him all the time I highly doubt anyone would expect BM to pay child support. Even though she works and probably doesn't make that much less than SO.
All you can do is go to court and try to get the CS inforced. I'm pretty sure at some point they can garnish her paycheck. GL!
sorry about the duplicate post
I agree, the system is very biased in some states. I think I saw someone post a while ago that they have the SKs full time and BM pays like $50 a month ($50/week?) Still. I doubt you'll have any judge make a mistake and award a biodad as much as that judge awarded Serendipity's BM.
There is very definitely a double standard. If my DH was not the custodial parent, and had ignored the court order the way his ex has, he would probably be in jail or at the very least have paycheck garnished or tax refund confiscated. BUT - BM doesn't do what she's supposed to, and if we try to enforce the CO, everybody acts like we're picking on her. (And to be clear - she is single, has no other children, HAD two jobs (so double income), and had had four new cars in the last four years, after the one she had in DH's name got repossessed (on DH's credit - Thanks!).
That was me. DH's ex pays $50/MONTH fTOTAL for 3 kids. Yep, pathetic. It doesn't even cover the cost of lunches, or prescriptions, or...well...anything.
Ha, PC when I read Curly's post I thought it was me. I guess we're evidence of the double standard.
BM pays $70/mo for 3 kids - $35 each.
sorry - for 2 kids
The question shouldn't be how unfair it is vs how firm are the custodial fathers at FIGHTING FOR or ENFORCING Child Support.
I cannot remember where I read the stats (again....I think of Mark Twains quote whenever I use statistics), while most BioFathers who are awarded FULL residential custody do so because there are major issues with the BioMother - where the BM will be less likely to be ABLE to pay child support - when that is NOT the case, BF tend not to fight for normal CH sums or enforce the CS because:
1) they feel that they were lucky enough get custody, so they won't rock the judicial boat more or
2) the CS $ is so low it is not worth enforcing it.
If you do not fight for it in the first place OR enforce it afterwards, then you should not complain about it.
.
And I know that I sound harsh about that. But MY DH is one of the Complainers who does not enforce it. And it pisses me off to no end.
Our CO states that the residential parent gets $250 a week. DH refuses to enforce the CS. But at the same time continually brings up the fact that BM STOLE the kids inheiritance ($10k each) for their college.
If he took a stand, we would have repaid that amount this year!
Oh and when DH got custody of SD, FL awarded him CS from BM. The two washed each other out until SD turned 18. DH paid the $ to BM until SS came here.
So I have experinced it.
No Illumine, you're right. We live in a VERY Mother-oriented state, and DH realized when he went to court that unless BM was willing to basically give up the kids in front of the judge, there was no way he could get full custody without a fight. SO, at the time, he agreed to let her pay a very minimal amount.
Then, you have the mandatory waiting time to change the order, which was a couple of years. And we had no money to do it at that point. Then 2 years ago, we needed to get the visitation order changed, since she wasn't following it and would use it to threaten us when she was pissed. So - we change that, and then have to wait 2 more years to do the child support - at which point BM lost both her jobs. SO. It sucks.
But hopefully in a year or so we can get it reevaluated again.