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Can anyone explain the math involved in child support payments? How is it that a father can be told by the state to pay $225 a month for two kids when the mother makes less than he does and has the children 5 nights/week, and also pays for 90% of their food, 75% of their clothing, all of their incidentals (e.g., toothpaste, birthday gifts, violin rental, laundry detergent) and does 95% of the work involved in keeping them going, e.g., appearing civilized and moderately groomed, getting their homework done, arriving in the right place at somewhat the right time. It seems to me that the courts ASSUME that somehow the mother will come up with the rest of the money that the $225 does not cover in monthly expenses — whether it means borrowing or working crap jobs that take her away from her kids or renting out more and more of her house. How this adds up to make any kind of sense whatsoever is beyond me.
I keep having an image of me hanging off a cliff. I have a rope and those special spidey power shoes, so I’m safeish, but I’m really not used to hanging off a cliff. I’ve gotten better at it over the past year, and even found some smallish comfort zone, but it’s just not my natural space. I’m gwetting tired and, frankly, bored. But the top of the cliff is just right there – ugh, canalmostreach it. Almost it.
Breathe. Keep hanging. The rope’s got you. Now, before you can stand at the top and look out at where you’ve been and where you’re going, keep your wits about you. Pull the latest version of the stipulation out of your back pocket–yeah, you too can reach it, pal — just do it! –then let your lawyer know how it looks. Call the accountant and ask that question that’s been sitting in your frontal lobe for nearly a month. Go ahead and pay your bills for this month, including the mortgage that just went up by$50 and is now seriously off the charts ridiculous, trusting that they will get paid again next month even if you don’t know how. Apply for the jobs that you can apply for; sure, they don’t excite you, but neither did that boulder that fell on your back last spring. When the money heebie jeebies come up at 3:33 am or while walking the dog this morning, do what your friend C. says, and just check in with your body, sit with the heebies and see all the ways in which they’re about so much more than money. In fact, they’re not really about the money at all (or so he says, and I believe him in my gut but head hasn’t quite figured it out yet).
Speaking of which, calmly but repeatedly ask Alex for the money he owes you. He’s over there hanging off his own cliff and he can surely just toss you the wad of cash, which you can then catch in your teeth because you’ve gotten pretty dang amazing at such no-handed feats. While you’re at it, politely ask him – again – to stop taking food from your house; he can buy his own flour and cinammon and maple syrup… Stay focused. Just a little bit farther to go. Think how good it will be to sit at the top and breathe and look around for a while. But don’t get too cocky. See that cliff over there? It’s next.
That’s what I said when I called to tell Alex that the mortgage company had just called me to say they had yet to receive the August 1st payment . His voice rose and he started to say, “I …” But I cut him off at the pass.
“Spare me the indignation! Just deal with it.” Click.
It turned out that my transfer of funds to him to cover the mortgage, which was supposed to be automatically paid from his account, never went through. Which has an echo of yesterday’s call from the credit card company that hadn’t received payment since June — “I swear, I paid it.” Or the other credit card that was overdue a week earlier and which elicited a blank look, followed by, “What??”
Dear Reader, I am wellllllll aware of how this crap is messing up my credit rating. I had paid off our credit cards about two years ago – totally down to zero — and gotten rid of all but one, telling him that it was for emergencies only. Turns out he found many things to be an emergency. It also turns out that he kept another one that I thought was extinct.
I’m painfully aware of what little recourse I have. The credit card companies won’t take my name off of the acc’ts – even though the acc’ts are officially closed. As my credit gets jacked around by He Who Cannot Be Trusted (you may recall that the first words out of my mouth when he asked me to marry him were, “If you promise not to bounce any more checks.”), I am beginning to wonder what – if any – retribution I can get via the divorce process. There is no fair fix. I mean, Alex can’t wave a magic wand and repair my credit rating. But is there an apples-to-oranges gesture that could be made? One suggestion from a friend has been that he pay a portion (a large portion) of my legal feels. Any ideas?
In the meantime, I just want my financial karmic self to be completely, utterly CUT from this person with these toxic habits. Wow, ok, it just occurred to me that I need to practice compassion on Alex around money. Ooooohhhh, that makes me squirm. Which means it’s probably a really necessary place to go.
Gosh, guys, thanks for helping me figure this out! 
I’m just starting to grapple with the legalities of visitation, child support, etc, all of which is complicated because Alex’s current life is so unstable and transient. His current income = zero. His current address = mud hut. Kind of hard to make a plan around that. Nor does he know where he’ll be living when he returns to the States, or exactly what he’ll be doing for income. So there will probably be many caveats written into the final document.
Someone left a comment on my last post that receiving the check from her ex, prior to when the automatic deposit kicks into action, makes her feel like a prostitute or a beggar. Yeah, I definitely get that. I’ve been amazed by the number of divorced mamas I’ve encountered who forego formal child support because they so want the financial chains to be completely clipped. These aren’t wealthy women. One friend, a social worker, has her ex pay for summer camps, after-school programs, sports and music lessons, and back-to-school stuff. Then she does the rest herself exactly because she couldn’t stand the check exchange or the sense that he was giving her the evil eyeball every time she showed up in a new pair of shoes or went on vacation. “It was like he thought his money was going toward me. He never got that what he was paying wasn’t even enough to cover our son, so of course none of it was going to me.”
I know other people who are ADAMANT about a father’s obligation to pay child support – my lawyer included, who has already politely put me in my place for suggesting that I’ll “give” on various financial areas just in order to be done with things. ”Uh, that’s his debt, too,” he says, gently but without any sense that we should budge on the point at hand. And I think there’s a certain obligation we owe to the women who came before us who fought the hard fight to get child support. The legal rights we have, as compared to women in developing countries, shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“His father never paid his child support regularly, so I don’t think you should assume he will either.” THAT “sage” advice came from Alex’s mom when she was trying to convince me stay in the marriage. As though I was somehow going to get more money out of him by staying together? She was overlooking the fact that it also meant being saddled with his debt.
Another friend just told me that she and her ex take turns from year to year claiming their son on their tax returns. But he lives with her, staying with the dad two nights a week, so the arrangement didn’t make sense to me. “Yeah, but I got out of all of his student loans,” she said. Ok, I see: it’s a game. You pay this, and I’ll pay that and maybe we’ll come out feeling something like ok at the end of the day.
Or not. I’m guessing Or Not kind of rules the day for most divorced couples. You?
Back and forth. Back and forth. That’s how the emails have been between here and Sudan today and yesterday as I try to grapple with our taxes and fill out a “Home Affordable Modification Program Hardship Affidavit” on behalf of myself and my “spouse” or “c0-borrower”, depending on the form of the moment. I cannot wait to be done with this financial connectedness or his disconnect. When I asked him via email about our state taxes from last year, he replied, “I don’t remember doing them.” YOU JEST, RIGHT? I wrote back and didn’t get a reply.
I cannot wait to FORGET Alex’s social security number and to never know again what preposterous amount he paid for a computer and then lied to be about it. I don’t want to look through old credit card bills and be reminded of his weakness for sushi. I don’t want to see restaurant and bar bills for places that he didn’t go with me but which are clearly a bill for two people; a date bill. And I really don’t want to have to figure things out in part via his mother, who lives half a country away and has Power of Attorney while he’s away.
I am broke – pitifully,embarrassingly, malnutritionally broke – but no matter how poor, I wish I never had to take another penny from him again. I haven’t told him that I had to put in a new toilet or that the insurance wouldn’t pay for my fillings because, it turns out, they only pay for the silver kind, not the white ones. (Couldn’t someone have mentioned this possibility beforehand?) I didn’t mention the staggering vet bill or the rise in the price of the only kind of dog food our dog can eat without getting sick — a full $10 more than this time last year.
I wish he were just a guy who comes and helps my son put together the Lego stuff that I hate, or who takes the kids to soccer on the coldest days of the year. I don’t mind that he’s the person I’d call in the middle of the night for an emergency tonsilectomy. And I’ll even dance with him at my daughter’s wedding. But let’s get this paperwork done and never look at another dollar sign together again.
