I haven't posted in quite a while….it's been a weird year, but Guy and I did manage to get married! He proposed nearly a year ago, planned a big surprise with the help of the kids, got a bunch of our friends from out of the area, and in the area, together and popped the question. Six months later…BOOM. Married.
Of course, as an engagement present, Stella decided to stop paying any reimbursements or monies due to Guy, other than the child support that was automatically being deducted from her paycheck. Then three months after that, I was let-go from the job I'd had for 6 years, and THEN a week after that, Stella got herself fired, too! Wow…go figure. And the timing…well…I got fired on the last day the kids had school because it also happened to be just at the end of the fiscal year at my last job. So at least we didn't have daycare to pay for over the next few weeks. Stella got fired a week before the kids were to spend a few weeks with her. Same thing…that…happened…..to her....the….previous…..year…….. So, Stella spent the first 4 weeks of her summer visitation at home with the kids (and with no car…we're pretty sure she took out a title loan on it, then the car broke, then she defaulted on the loan, and the car was "removed" from her apartment complex without her consent. Second time that's happened.). After 4 weeks, just as the summer before, she started up hard with the job search and found a new "career!" (every new job is a "Fantastic New Career!!"), most likely because she could never handle having the kids around 24/7 for long periods of time. I kind-of empathize with her, because I get stressed out every time vacation comes around and I'm stuck home to entertain them. But then again, she chose to have kids. I inherited them. Oh, she didn't start really paying child support after she found work again, but hey….got that new job. And was hauled into court by Guy right around her start for non-payment of child support and reimbursements while she HAD a job the four months before that, so she was forced to tell the judge where she then worked, and child support started getting garnished again a few weeks before the wedding. Then after the wedding, I finally found another job. A MUCH BETTER job, and I'm so grateful for it….
Because three days after Christmas, then Guy was fired from HIS job. And didn't find another one until about 6 weeks later. He's working now, but our finances are screwed….and Stella changed jobs AGAIN about a week after Guy started working…. We just can't win. We did find out where she's working, again, but in the last 6 weeks we've only gotten 1 child support payment, where 3 should have been received.
The problem we're facing now, aside from the usual crap we put up with from Stella, is clearly financial and it's straining our brand-new marriage. I'm suddenly the primary breadwinner in the household (and as much as Guy says that's cool, it's clearly not). Plus, now we actually NEED the child support.
Almost all of my girlfriends who are in this situation say, "NEVER depend on child support." They're right. But what about when you need it and it isn't there? Even Dave Ramsey, the God of Budgeting and Cash Management, says that if you receive CS, it should be incorporated into your household budget. The problem is, trying to make sure it comes in, when you need it, so that that you can balance that budget. That's where we're failing miserably right now.
What are our options? Normally, we have two paths - go through the court, or go through the State and have them deal with it.
We tried the court path first, last year, when Stella had initially been refusing to pay her reimbursements due and refusing to pay her child support, despite being employed. Brief recap of the timeline, plus when we tried to go through the courts….6 months after the custody change, Stella lost the job she'd had for 4 1/2 years. Poof went the benefits she'd been providing, and poof went child support, yet she never told the court she was unemployed, and the balances kept racking up for the benefits and support she was supposed to be providing. Four months later, and four weeks into her visitation period with the kids that summer, she FINALLY found a new "career" but refused to tell us where she was working. Four months after that, we finally tracked down her employer, but it took a while to get child support going again and it wasn't until 2 months after finding her employer's information that we received our first payment in 5 months. Just before getting CS started again, Guy filed for enforcement through the court, and had an "enforcement conference" with an officer of the court and Stella, in which Stella was found responsible for all back-due costs, made to pay Guy's fees for bringing the matter to court in the first place, and had 2 judgments issued against her with monthly payments set. Four months after that, Guy filed for contempt against Stella, due to the fact that Stella had already, again, gotten behind on her child support payments (even though her employer was supposed to be garnishing her wages - but they were doing so incorrectly, Stella knew, and did nothing thinking it wasn't her responsibility because, of course, it never is) and she wasn't making her court-ordered payments on the judgment she was supposed to be paying on. Then I got fired, then Stella got fired the day that the Motion for Contempt hit the public docket…. Then summer started. Four weeks into that, Stella found her next new "career" and that lasted about 6 months again. Then she changed jobs voluntarily at the beginning of this year, didn't tell the court where, we tracked her down AGAIN and just submitted the paperwork for her and finally started getting CS again two weeks ago, after nothing for about 6 weeks, as previously mentioned. Is your head spinning? Because mine hasn't STOPPED spinning since 6 months after the custody change when this whole mess started.
The last court hearing happened a month after Guy and I got married, which was 3 months after Guy filed for relief, which also was the day after Stella started her next-to-last "new career" aka the job she held before the job she has now. Stella went in to the hearing with no evidence, not having filed the ORDERED financial disclosures, and crying. By contrast, Guy went in there calm, having properly filed every single thing that had been required of him, on time, and in the right format. Well, for the first time, he got SCREWED by a mother-friendly judge who, based on her ruling, didn't look at any of Guy's evidence, didn't care that Stella hadn't disclosed anything about her financial situation other than a couple of pay stubs, and the judge made reference, in the final ruling, to things Stella had sobbed out in court but for which she offered no supporting evidence. So, the judge was clearly a soft-hearted idiot who didn't like Guy and felt that Stella deserved a break….because clearly the judge hadn't read the case file, nor looked at anything that had been filed for court preparation.
Now, Guy was asking for contempt in that hearing. According to the law, had the judge bothered to enforce it, he should have gotten contempt and a bond imposed on Stella, which obviously didn't happen. The judge DID give Guy two more judgments against Stella, though….but did not specify any payments for Stella to make (so, of course, she hasn't made any). Stella is behind in child support and reimbursements AGAIN as I type this (that's THREE sets of arrears in a year), so Guy can now choose to go the enforcement, not contempt, route again that is offered by the state we deal with. This would probably result in another judgment being established, and which would be heard by a conference officer again, and then forwarded to a commissioner who sees deadbeat parents and deals with unpaid monies owed every day, not a judge who sees all family court issues. The best a commissioner could do, most likely, would be to impose that bond. But there's still all of the conference and hearing prep that we would have to do, plus a filing fee.
The option that Guy has chosen to take is to just go through the State. FINALLY. Going through Child Support Enforcement (CSE) is a drawn-out process. But for the person filing it just involves a big packet of paperwork and then the matter is taken out of the filing party's hands. This is good and bad - being a little bit of control freaks (yes…Guy and I are….) giving a state agency the responsibility of making sure there's money coming into our household from Stella is a scary thought. State agencies are slow. They are backlogged (why are they always backlogged?), and they give the most attention to cases in which one of the parties was receiving state or federal assistance, like unemployment, food stamps, or Medicaid, because they want to make their money back. Rarely does anyone mention that when they bring up going through the state for enforcement…if you take assistance from the state and get food stamps or welfare, but you're owed child support, the state will want their money back from the party who was supposed to be paying you in the first place because presumably, if you had been getting the support you were due, you wouldn't have needed food stamps or welfare. Alternatively, if you owe child support but you're receiving government aid, the state is going to want to get to your case first, because if they're spending money on you that they shouldn't be, they want to know about it.
The reason that going through the state is a good thing, though, is because they take care of EVERYTHING. They handle modifications for free when they're requested. They go after the child support obligee when payments aren't received on time or in full. They can seize tax returns, take chunks of unemployment payments (which is especially helpful with you're dealing with a parent who "gets fired" a lot and is constantly on the dole), and they can even seize passports and driver's licenses (which is often a good incentive for obligees to get their butts in gear and pay their support, so that they can continue to legally drive at least to work and/or travel and avoid making that hole they've dug themselves any bigger). But again, as none of the parties in our case (not Guy, and not Stella….she keeps applying for unemployment and keeps getting rejected…weird….) have received state's assistance, Guy's case will go at the bottom of the pile, and we'll be lucky if we hear anything in the next 3 months.
In the meantime, we'll try and get by. Kids are SO EXPENSIVE, especially given the fact that Marsha needed to be put in therapy following last summer's visit with Stella and her clan (so, that's been approximately 6 months of therapy at this point…and is a story for another post), plus Marsha is extremely destructive where her clothing is concerned and it constantly needs replacing because she's splitting it open or making holes in it. And the kids are in sports (which we've determined is a need in their case - a constructive outlet). And they're growing, and eating…a lot…. and I had to take on the cost of the medical insurance because my job has benefits and Guy's does not…. Money is not our friend right now.
Hopefully things will get better. But for right now, they're tough. But hey, at least we started getting child support! Until Stella gets herself fired…again….
