Child support

“This is a revolution, not a public relations movement”

February 1, 2010 Child support

So miniFP’s dad has never paid regular or in any way substantial child support. For years there was nothing, then sporadically he’d call and promise the world and I’d see a couple of $50 payments then the novelty would wear off.

I did say ‘I don’t care about the money, get yourself together and be there for miniFP’, however how you can just not give a fuck whether your child has enough to eat (AND not be around, AND move to Germany) is totally beyond me.

For years I’ve left it to ‘fate’ – I’ve never called the CSA to get them to chase it up. Once, years ago, there was a mysterious $1000 deposit. It was backpayments they’d chased from him – given his allocated rate was $27 a month, that tells you how long it’d been since he bothered forwarding an amount that covers say miniFP’s bus fares, or my banking fees and a couple of loaves of bread. Per fucking month. And do you know what happened then? It turned out his Mummy had paid the money and expected me to psychically devine this fact and to call her and THANK her! Uh…sure…thanks lady for bailing out your dickwad of a son. Thanks for providing what HE should have. Thanks so fucking much for being so very kind as to loan to your idiot son what he was OBLIGED to pay towards his child’s support: guess what? It’s not a fucking gift!

Bitter? Whatever. Angry? Hell, yes.mIt’s just that when you call yourself a father and you dare to get up in my face about how AWFUL it was *for you* when you nipped back from Germany to marry your new wife and you (for the first time in your child’s life) picked him up from school to take him to your wedding and found he was enrolled (gasp) under my last name (hey, I raised him on my own since he was nine months, it was MY hair he vomited into sick with asthma, MY feet he shat all over after bowel problems) you’d kind of think that you might have trouble sleeping at night (or at least be too ashamed to have a fucking screaming tantrum at me on the first day of your honeymoon) if you had been withholding the measly fucking $27 a month you were supposed to pay because you’re a liar and a lazy shit and evade paid work so you don’t have to be arsed either working or paying for a tiny fraction of your kid’s food. And when miniFP cries himself to sleep at night because his Dad can’t be bothered being a Dad (to him), and because his little brother won’t remember him next time you’re out on a flying visit your parents pay for, and you haven’t contributed financially are you even there to hug him better? No, I really didn’t think so.

So today I called the CSA for the first time in what? Over a decade. Just to check in, just to say ‘Hey, you know that piss poor amount? Well you know, I’ve just about bankrupted myself again trying to give miniFP a halfway decent start to highschool, do you think you could call FuckFace and ask what’s up with that?’.

Turns out they’ve been calling, they’ve been talking, they’ve been trying to sort something out. To hear what I wonder? “Well I really can’t be bothered you see! For me to support my first born son (even nominally) I’d have to cut back on the fags and…well…I like them…a lot. So I think I will not thanks”.

Go on. Talk to me about how unfairly biased towards women the legal system/child support system is. I double fucking dare you.

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Permalink # K said

Loving the vitriol (you are a very eloquent woman), not loving the place/situation it comes from.
I nearly cried reading that. What an asshole.
I hope he gets eaten by German Shepherds 🙂
Mwah xxx
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Ha! I’d concur with the german shephards thing, at least in jest, except for the fact that my son still loves him and would like him around. That’s sort of the worst part. Is that I *don’t* even care about the money. If I could choose between a stack of child support and having him back in the country and seeing my son, even though he *is* a totally flawed human being and not a particularly responsible father/human being, I would choose him here for miniFP. MiniFP has seen enough of his Dad’s behaviour to know how flawed a person is and the thing is he doesn’t care – he’d be happy just to *have* that flawed person as a presence, as a parent, however ‘inadequate’. But you know, he gets *neither* – not the financial support, and not the presence and the emotional comfort that seems it would bring him. Yes, an asshole.
Permalink # berryblade said

I really don’t know what else to say other than my heart goes out to you right now and what a fucking bastard. I’m sorry to hear this 😦
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Meh – it’s okay. Nothing new, just venting in frustration. I don’t think he *means* to be such a bastard. He’s just monumentally fucked up. It doesn’t help miniFP any though that he doesn’t mean to be.
Permalink # Don said

Fucking hell, $27 a month, what sort of dick court ordered that amount. CSA should just give you the money as it would be costing them more than that to chase him. This sort of thing shits me. I hope you have a big lotto win!
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Thanks Don, though to have a big lotto win, I’d have to *enter* lotto! 🙂
Permalink # Alison said

Heh. The only time I’ve ever completely lost it with another human being was in the same situation. The money (which wasn’t ever there and which I never chased, although for a long time I lived in utter poverty, although I survived) didn’t matter, but the hurt to the child, who had no way of defending himself against that hurt, made me as angry as I’ve ever been in my life.

The good news is the boy is now grown up and is a lovely, smart, interesting and above all well-balanced young man. Since he was old enough to make his own decisions, and since his dad moved back to Melbourne, they’ve developed a relationship. If the son has a slightly ironic relationship to his biological dad, it’s also fond, and I am glad for it. It’s actually worked out fine: a few scars, which can’t be helped, but what counts in the end is the security that the boy has in you.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Thanks Alison for sharing your story. I’m glad to hear that they now have a good relationship. I wonder sometimes with miniFP. When his little brother was here for a week or so he asked what the point was in meeting him since he wouldn’t remember him the next time he came out. And you know, it’s a valid point.
Permalink # Naomi Eve said

$27/month – I’m gobsmacked! I love the mil’s response, I doubt she’s been sending regular birthday presents, holiday presents, support for starting kindy, prep, school, support for medical emergencies, support for babysitting so you could have a night solo now and then … but $1k, and you’re expected to be psychic. I see the relationship between mother and son there …

If I win Lotto, I’ll happily split it with you 🙂
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Ha! Thanks Naomi, that’d be great.

It’s not all doom and gloom though – I mean it has been at times, there have been years of being unable to sleep properly due to the unholy terror that all the plates I was spinning to keep us afloat would come crashing down around our heads: I’d fail, go bankrupt and we’d be totally fucked. But casual work gave way to (eventually) permanent work. And that one change has had the biggest impact on our lives. It’s not a huge salary (still less now I’ve opted to drop to three days in order to finish the study a bit quicker) but I know it’s coming in, and it comes in if I’m at work or not, if I’m well or sick, if I’m working or in an exam or on holiday. And hey presto, insomnia gone. It’s nothing like ‘easy street’, however I do know that I’ve worked hard on this stuff, and I’ve made choices to be generous and support people financially and otherwise and I can feel that support come back to me – my parents had never been in a position to help me financially and I’ve provided everything myself since I was fifteen (though they did let me move back into their house when I left miniFP’s dad) but Mum inherited a bit of money recently and gave me some for me to spend on stuff I ‘wanted’ not on paying down debt etc (I already had a plan in place and progressing for that) and called to say she’d like to provide some more assistance with miniFP’s school costs. I’ve got an equity scholarship etc. My income is still pretty fucking pathetic, but it allows me to get by, allows me to study and raise my child and occassional treats. So all in all it’s pretty good and I’m pretty lucky. It’s just when the stress of ‘OMG my credit card is looking the worse for wear after shopping for school supplies’ gets to me I suddenly think ‘And where the fuck ARE you in all this’.
Permalink # Alison said

Fwiw, my daughter didn’t see her dad (yes, the same flake) from babyhood to seven years old, and was so hostile and alarmed for many years after that – how could this stranger be her dad? – that they never had a relationship until her late teens. Now it’s kind of on a par with my son, if obviously different from the boy because he has baggage; but the consciousness and ability to reflect that comes with being older makes a big difference. Especially if they have a sense of their own agency in these things. It’s very difficult when kids are little, because there are limits to what they can understand, and that is what makes you feel helpless.

Just raise him as you obviously are, be open and honest and make sure he knows you love him. I would say you’re managing all that incredibly well – it’s not at all about being perfect, but about acting in ways your child and you can respect (including towards yourself and your work). I’m sure it will turn out just fine. The rest is up to the other guy, and you can’t do anything about that.
Permalink # Fat Academic said

My 12 yr old son has never met his father in person (by his father’s choice). They (father and now wife) wanted me to let them take son to the zoo when he was about 6. They wanted me to take son to the city, drop him off with them (who he had never met and never spoken to) and then come back later and collect him. Naturally I said no and proposed a visitation schedule that would give son a chance to get to know them gradually (and I went all the way from initial visit to future school holidays in the plan). Naturally they said no and accused me of being an unreasonable bitch from hell. Child support was sporadic at best until son was about 8 or 9 and then I went ‘private collect’ in order to stop the now-wife from stalking me, harrassing me and abusing me. Since that time, neither son nor I have heard so much as a whimper from his father or the now wife. Apparently they are now living in the same state as us again (after being up and down the coast) but we wouldn’t know that if someone hadnt told us. Son hasnt heard ANYTHING from his father in over 4 years (there used to be the very occassional email). Father is too busy with now wife, three kids and career obviously. Personally I am happy to have nothing to do with them and they can stick their money but I feel sorry for my son. Thankfully he has a step father who loves him, a little sister who adores him and is a pretty happy and well adjusted kid. No thanks to the sperm donor.
Permalink # attack_laurel said

Gah. This happened with me and my sister – my father never paid CS, and my mother never chased him down on it – and it happened with my husband’s ex-wife’s ex-husband (less complicated than it sounds), who abandoned her and her baby son soon after he was born (my husband raised him, and he calls my husband “dad”), and worse, treated his new wife’s children like fucking royalty.

Every time I hear MRAs whine about child support, all I can think is that they can walk away from raising a child, and the worst they’ll be called is a “deadbeat dad”. If the child’s mother did the same thing, she’s be called names too horrible to repeat in public. It’s unbelievable to me that these men are so cavalier about their own fucking children.

(I have a decent relationship with my Dad now, but I’m 40. When I was little, I was terrified of him, and when I was a teenager, I was indifferent. He was involved with us, he just never had a steady enough income that my mother felt like chasing him for child support. My relationship with him improved after he paid my living expenses for college, and I figured out that he actually did care.)
Permalink # hannah's dad said

The COALition govt made changes to Supporting Parent Benefit payments with one deliberate overt aim and one covert aim in mind.
Firstly to reduce the govt portion of payments to supporting parents [read single mums generally].
They succeeded.
Secondly to reduce, in many instances, the amount paid by non-custodial parents [read dads generally].
They succeeded.

The net result was that many single parents [read ….], about one third roughly, had their net incomes reduced by about one third.
Over the same time frame [last few years of the COALition govt] that govt gave billions in tax cuts and super benefits to those at the top of the scales in each case.

For details read the report entitled:

“In the Best Interests of Children [sic];Reforming the Child Support Scheme” and, if you have a very strong stomach, the 2 expert reports appendices commissioned by the govt and compare those 2 reports as to what was, and was not, included in the ‘new, reformed, deluxe, super duper’ SPB payments and the rationale thereof.

I can refer you to a critique of the ‘reforms’ if you wish but it will take a roundabout method, I just checked such and found I got my figures wrong.
The one third reduction in income should be 60% reduction.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Yeah, knock yourself out with links hannah’s dad. I knew a bit about those things from news at the time and from family law. I think I’ve done the same thing regarding the Howard era as I have with my relationship with miniFP’s dad. I just BLOCK IT RIGHT ON OUT. I can’t handle thinking about it so my brain happily erases it while I think of more pleasant things. In the case of miniFPs dad, that’s actually useful. In the case of the Howard era it’s good for my blood pressure, but bad in terms of rembering all the facts and details about how much of a fucker the man really was
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Thanks for sharing your story attack_laurel. I’m glad your relationship with your dad has improved. Yeah – the MRA stuff – wow.
Permalink # Jenn said

I totally commiserate, except on the other end of the equation: that of the child. My dad never stopped working or anything like that, but he did try to hide assets several times, and never ever paid more than the absolute minimum amount of support to my mother. He gave my mother a nervous breakdown after he requested a “reduction” in support when he said he was making a lateral move at work and was getting paid less. My mother had to drag him to court dates for over a year, and lost three jobs at the time because she constantly had to take off. We were shopping at Goodwill, and my douche father shopped at Ralph Lauren and Nordstroms, then “forgot” about court dates because he was in Mexico or on a cruise with the new wife. Long story short, he was actually making more money, but the courts never ordered him to pay the difference of what he should have been paying, and my mother got no compensation for her tenacity — against all the odds — other than the resumption of the piss-poor payments he had been making before. Payments, I might add, that he never made in the first place until the courts forced his company to automatically take the amount out of his paycheck.

When people talk about divorce being unfair to fathers, I laugh hysterically. I don’t know a single father in real life that ever got the short end of the stick, or even got an equal share. They all somehow turn out perfectly fine, while the mothers and their children languish in poverty.

I guess that all I have to say is that I’m totally sympathetic, and I think you’re totally awesome for going so far above and beyond the duties of parenthood that are asked of men (read: none). I look up to my mother for her example of caring and responsibility, and I hope your boy does the same some day. My mother was always honest with me: my father was a douche, and only paid because someone made him. I grew up knowing that, and I thank my lucky stars that I had such low expectations of him by the time I hit an age that it mattered that his abandonment of me and my brother didn’t shatter me. Sure, it hurt, but not because my expectations weren’t met; it was because I didn’t have any in the first place, and what poor ones I did have were always met.

My brother’s another story entirely. He totally idolizes his father, even though he abandoned him more than he did me (he left the state when my brother attempted suicide his Sophomore year, I was already in college and used to his asshole ways). He blames my mother and hates when she’s honest about what a douche he is. I hope that your boy doesn’t do that in desperate search for a “father figure”. My brother seems to think that he can’t look up to my mother because she has a vagina, so it’s better to idolize the dude that’s only a parent when it’s convenient to him.

Seriously, if your kid does that, tell him that I think he’s stupid. You’re an awesome Mom for putting up with that shithead of a father and raising a kid at the same time.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Thanks Jenn,

Just to be on the record for lurkers – I’m *not* trying to say that the system is never manipulated by women, or that women are inherently ‘good’ and ‘honest’ about family stuff while men are naturally ‘cheapskates’ etc.

I do know Dads who care and have really had a hard time in being a part of their child’s life, or who have paid too much, or who have had lies told about them.

As my family law lecturer said ‘There are always exceptions, I want to talk about the structural supports for certain kinds of families and certain members of families’ and Hannah’s Dad pointed to some of that.

I just wanted to clarify that.

Yes, I used to dread that my son would react the way it seems your brother has. But to be honest, I just can’t see it. If he does, I’ll deal. But I think he’s got too much insight for that. He’s a funny kid – he has Asperger’s which is said to limit empathy – in the sense of being able to spontaneously ‘get’ the emotions coming from another/pick up small social cues I can see that, but in the sense of really understanding how a situation might feel and feel for that person, he has more ability to cut through the crap and get to the heart of the issue than any kid I know.

Thanks for sharing and thanks for your kind words.
Permalink # hannah's dad said

http://www.ncsmc.org.au/publications/archive/2006

The website of National Council Of Single Mothers and Their Children.
Archives.
2007
#11 on the list:
Family Law Child Support Reform by Jac Taylor.

A brief resume of a seminar she gave that outlines how the COALition govt. deliberately designed family law reform to:
-downgrade the principle of ‘in the best interests of the child” in favour of ‘the rights of parents’ [read dads]. See slides 4,6,8 in particular. Note the role of FRCs in this respect.
-the decrease in payments to single parents [read mums] and subsequent savings to the govt and dads.
Note slide #17:
Prof. Parkinson …”60% of sole parent households will have a reduced income …”

There is a lot more that could be said and I take too long to type to go into the horrid detail.
Suffice it to say that the extra barriers placed on separating women, the decrease in emphasis on the rights of children, the lower priority on domestic violence, the decrease in payments by non-custodial parents and the govt and the resultant decrease in revenue to single mums were all deliberate and premeditated and the govt had been specifically informed that such would be the outcome of their legislation.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Thanks for that hannah’s dad. I do remember some of this now. Dodgy shit.
Permalink # hannah's dad said

And last week the Family law Council released their report on the COALition stuff referred to above [re family violence] and we just read it today.
One of the things the FLC has criticised is the Howard govts’ use of ‘reasonable’ to discount womens’ fears of violence. [Its in one of Jac’s slides].
This what the FLC has said re that.

“3.3.1 Impacts on the Family Law Act 1975 of an amended definition of
family violence
Council notes that the adoption of this definition would remove the objective element
contained in the definition in section 4 of the Family Law Act. The “reasonableness”
requirement cannot be tested in any meaningful way in any purported application of
section 60I(b)(iii) and (iv).
If a parent should be found to have a genuine fear or apprehension, which for
whatever reason may be found to be unreasonable, there should not be a presumption
of equal shared parental responsibility.
If the extended definition should cause the invoking of section 60K the primary
consequence would be an earlier consideration of the matter by a court than otherwise.
This could be regarded as “queue jumping” but this can be corrected by the judicial
officer at an early point.
Council suggests that further consideration be given to the possible legislative side
effects of broadening the definition”

Good stuff, but why did it take 3 years and where were they back then?

Its available on the side bar right at the attorney-general’s website.

The COALition were, still are, nasty bastards.
Permalink # Anji said

This is so frustrating, isn’t it! My ex hasn’t paid a penny in child support since he left – he went straight into being a full-time University student so he’s not obliged to pay a penny. I don’t get where the government got the idea that my ex being a student means my son magically no longer needs clothes, shoes, heating, a roof over his head or any of the other multitude of things my partner and I are paying full whack for. I honestly think that if the government decides a man is ‘not obliged’ to pay, then they should be paying it instead. You’re right, the system is heavily stacked against mothers despite what the tabloid press would have us believe!
Permalink # Keri said

I sympathise with your predicament, and I know that the CSA can be spectacularly shit at chasing up payments.

As a child, my parents split up and I found myself in the same boat. As did my father, who was my caregiver. My mother buggered off overseas, and never paid a cent in child support. Not one cent.

I know in your case your view is formed by your experience, but the primary caregiver is not always the mother. The system sucks just as much when it’s the father trying to take care of their children.

Maybe a better focus would be making sure that parents who can’t get the other parent to pay are taken care of by the government. No child should be deprived of a decent standard of living just because their other parent is an areshole.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Hi Keri, thanks for sharing your story.

I’m busy at work so I don’t have a lot of time, but I’m trying to look back over the post and the comments to see what ‘view’ it is that is formed by my experience or needs a better focus (I’m not being hostile here, I’m just trying to be careful with words without much time to think them through). Wondering if you could clarify it for me.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Fat Academic, I’m sorry, I totally missed your story in amongst the influx of comments and dealing with a troll on another thread. Yeah miniFP is generally speaking a pretty happy kid. He doesn’t cry too much about it, but it’s heartbreaking when he does.
Permalink # Keri said

Oh, I just meant that in terms of the last sentence about how the system isn’t geared towards women. I probably expressed my self badly. I more meant that it seems that the caregiving parent – male or female – is at a detriment, since the burden of chasing things up is on them, and the government gives no quarter to parents who can’t get financial support from the other parent. They should. And that person isn’t always a woman.
Permalink # fuckpoliteness said

Ah. Okay. I think that I was not communicating to clearly in that last line either – most of the post was simple anecdotal rant: me discussing how much this situation sucks.

The final sentence was something I was mildly uncomfortable with. To me, my meaning was clear: MRAs consistently bang on about stupid whore women who trap innocent men into parenthood in order to screw them over, take their money, possessions and pride, take their kids away and live a rich and lazy life while the poor men are left broken, that this is the rule rather than the exception, and the ludicrous feminazi court system allows this to happen and it MUST BE STOPPED, and it was to them I was saying ‘Tell me the system favours me, is run for me’.

I wholeheartedly agree that the parent left with the bulk of the care is entitled to support from their ex-partner, and that the legal system ought to ensure that these payments are made with the care-giving-parent not having to do the chasing, and nothing I wrote was intended to suggest that that is always a woman.

The post was a rant about my situation, and a scream of rage back at the morons who claim that society’s fucked, the feminists rule, women get everything and the legal system makes men pay so much they can’t afford a toilet to shit on. Statistically speaking however, the duty of care for a child falls far more regularly on the woman of the partnership – if women ‘ruled the system’ then they would be well and truly looked after, however statistics show that men’s finances recover far faster than women’s after a divorce, even where the statistics factor in the income ‘he’ loses and the support ‘she’ gains. That was my point. Not that there are never instances in which the same system fucks up a man where he’s ‘in the woman’s role’.

The issues go so much deeper than ‘my experience’ – that childcare is seen as ‘women’s work’ and ‘women’s work’ is radically undervalued. I want a society in which BOYS are raised to nurture and think about family commitments and how on earth will they have a career and a family etc etc, not just for girls to be raised to think about it, where BOTH men and women are given supportive arrangements with their workplaces to look after their child’s needs and return to work at whatever pace they see fit (and NEITHER have it currently).

So we’re in absolute agreement that the caregiving parent ought to be supported fully, however it is still the very-much-exception-to-the-rule that it is the man in this position – it doesn’t mean it should be respected any less and I did not mean to erase that, I simply meant that I as a woman, in the system that allegedly is catered to my every whim, am being screwed from all angles – he doesn’t pay, I have to juggle work/study/domestic duties/homework assistance/finances/social life etc etc and cope with the ‘single mum’ stigma. Women do get a really raw deal in society and sometimes men experience that when they find themselves in that ‘feminised’ position. It sucks just as bad for them, it’s just as unjust, it’s wrong, it’s crappy, and it shouldn’t be like that. But I do see the societal issues that lead to it as being a lot about gender.
Permalink # 22nd Down Under Feminists Carnival « Fuck Politeness said

[…] From Kiwi Back in Sydney! we have ‘Wiring Fault’ and my own post on Child Support – creatively entitled ‘Child Support’ […]