NYTimes has an article about modifying child support due to uncertain economic times.
A man who had been laid off from a factory said he managed to find work at Mets games, but for less pay, $9 an hour. Another man, on the verge of eviction, begged for a break from his $315 monthly payments.
“Last week was my child’s birthday, and I couldn’t get him a present,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “This is killing me.”
Since January, Family Court in New York has been filled with urgent requests like these, alarming judges and overwhelming calendars with what are known as modification cases.
Similar patterns are unfolding across the country: In Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, the district attorney’s family support division has received an unusually high number of calls from parents who previously paid diligently but are now having trouble.
The child-support office in Milwaukee saw a 20 percent spike in the number of custodial parents seeking enforcement of support orders last year, with most of the increase coming in the fall as the unemployment rate there began to creep upward.
To explain why they can no longer pay as much per month, the parents, typically fathers, cite layoffs, cutbacks in work hours and the loss of homes to foreclosure. Presented with documentation of falling incomes and rising expenses, judges often have little choice but to grant the downward adjustments, even in the face of protests from mothers struggling to support children.
Tough stuff. Some of my friends get and some of my friends pay child support. I see both sides of the coin here. For one friend her husband works for the government and so her support will not disappear until her kid turns 18/finishes high school this year. (But I think he needs to get a job anyway.) For another friend, I wonder what the heck his ex-wife is doing with all that child support money she gets since her kids are usually dressed pretty poorly when I see them.
It is really rough out there. It’s stuff like this that makes me unsure if I ever want kids.
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The kids question becomes a little easier if you can base the premise on a dedicated, hard working partner. I think. (Then again, I remain undecided).
The friend whose kids show up in shoddy clothing — likely the mother keeps the GOOD stuff at her house and won’t let them wear it to his house.
Paula, uh no. She’s a crappy housekeeper and a barfly whose kids have to fish her out of the neighborhood bar to fix them dinner. (True story.) His kids do their laundry at their dad’s house because he actually takes care of them. (It’s amazing that she still has primary custody. It just goes to show you the family courts are still biased towards the mother, even when she is incompetent.)
We’ve been struggling with this lately, but it’s not as serious for us. Child support has come and gone over the years and I learned to never count on it. What I eventually did was use the funds to pay for special activities for the daughter like summer camp and sports. We’ve been hurting this year because payments have stopped coming but we’re still trying to keep these activities going, especially summer camp because she only has 2 more years left until she’s too old and it’s such a valuable experience. Sadly, he was finally all caught up and out of arrears (which meant not income tax return withholding) and has fallen behind again.
Ugh the child support system is crap. For both sides.
There’s people like me who get a whopping 25.00 bucks a week (thats the order, whether or not I get it is something else entirely).
And I have male friends working at restaurants to pay hundreds of dollars a month, want to go back to school for an actual career but can’t because of the payment amount, judge won’t budge and mama lives at home with her mother, doesn’t work and has another child form another father.