That’s understandable, but then don’t dispute me when I say that “if the man tries to get custody, he is shit outta luck,” and respond with "That’s flat out wrong. " Because one look at my case, or the scores of other such cases on father’s rights sites, will show you that I’m making a reasonable assessment when I posit that the cards are stacked very high against fathers.
If a father can’t save his kids from living with a child molester, then I think it’s beyond any reasonable person’s doubt that the system is either blatantly biased or run by retarded monkeys.
It’s a shame that this valuable knowledge you posses is apparently so lacking amongst the family law attorneys in California, because if someone knew what you know, maybe we’d have the kids by now. I may sound sarcastic but I am not… we’re so desperate to get a hold of anything, ANY bit of help or advice that will end this insanity. It defies belief. We’ve spent thousands on several different lawyers, and this is as far as we’ve gotten. Something is seriously wrong here, if it is supposedly as easy as you say it is.
I don’t know that. And, to contradict you, I’ve been all puppies and honey each time I’ve attempted to contact anyone from your office. I’ve yet to EVER reach anyone on the first call. I’ve always been dumped into voice mail (to contradict another statement of yours).
Does, “I vass chust followink orduss” ring a bell?
That’s not what they said in the Trib. Or maybe I heard it wrong. If so, I apologize.
-BUT- How does that make the entire system look when they say, in effect, “OK, we’ve been screwing up, and we know it, and we’ve fixed it. However, we’re still going to screw you for another year just because we can’t fix our own fuckup any sooner?”
Yeah, everyone knows it’s wrong, it wastes a shitload of money, and nobody wants it. That means it’ll be here forever.
I’d think that some attention to detail might be important in your job, but whatever.
See? See the arrogance? You’re epitomizing exactly what I’ve said: You don’t give a damn about the payers or the kids; you’re just invested in the process. As long as the money passes through your hands, then tough noogies. No matter what anyone says, your response is “Take it back to court.”
And you couple that with, “There isn’t enough court time as it is.”
Your office was correct: There is no justice or fairness in your building.
Well, goddamn it, there has to be time for justice and reason! It couldn’t take more than one afternoon for a couple of intelligent people to come to the conclusion that basing child support on a percentage of what a person earns is ludicrous and that a more accurate measurement could be made based on actual costs.
But that would require someone to actually think.
But I have a solution!
Instead of your salaries…simply fire you all and spread the wealth among the poor kids that aren’t receiving any support. It would save the state a ton of money, and the kids would get the support they need. Everybody is happy.
Anyway, I’m nearing the end of the child support debacle, and it’s too aggravating to dwell on further.
Rysdad, I think you’re being unreasonable. I understand you are very frustrated with the situation that you are in, but ultimately child support officers cannot make new laws and cannot just overturn court decrees (because of ‘common sense’ or otherwise). It would be a ridiculous system if they had such power! MissTake has no authority to do these things that you are asking.
If your kid gets arrested and gets a jail sentence for having a joint in his pocket, is it the fault of the arresting officer that the sentence is too harsh?
As I said before, if she’s part of the process, she’s part of the problem. That, and the fact that each and every contact I’ve had with her particular office has resulted in me being treated disrespectfully. (This includes a period when the money was being deducted from my paycheck but wasn’t being received by my ex-. I was told that that was “impossible.” I had to take a day off from work to prove it.)
If he gets a jail sentence for a joint, that means the arresting officer must’ve planted more weed on him in order to reach a level that results in a jail sentence, so, yeah, it’s his fault.
Child support guidelines, as you describe, are child care expense guidelines. IME, the court doesn’t order a line cook making $12/hour pay for a child to go to some chichi daycare just because the custodial parent thinks it’s best for the child. Minnesota does have what it considers an average cost to raise a child, but I do not have that number in front of me. I will look it up tomorrow and post it tomorrow evening.
What I hear more of is “She spent the money on X when it should have gone to Y”. You and I may BOTH agree that the money should have been spent on Y; however, there isn’t a vehicle other than bringing the case back into court to resolve it. Again, accountability has been proposed multiple times to our legislature and shot down by the courts. The vindictiveness of people amaze me daily. People will call the cops on the other party just prior to visitation if they know a bench warrant is out there or if the other party is driving after license suspension. Sometimes they will wait until the children are in the car just to show the kid what a “bad” person mommy/daddy is. Payor has a new flame? I want him/her in jail NOW. Heaven forbid s/he has another child with someone else. I don’t want MY child support going to THAT person, lock the payor up NOW. Conversely, s/he has a wo/man in their life, let THAT person pay for my kid. Why should I pay support? The custodial parent married rich. If we were to add a requirement that the custodial parent must prove where the support goes to - all hell would break loose, IMO. And that’s beyond the fact that our computer system doesn’t have the ability to track things such as that, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be upgraded anytime soon.
And I agree with you again. I do not like people who use child support as wages. In Minnesota it IS getting better. In child support nationwide it is moving slowly forward, but it’s a twenty ton elephant on valium. It takes men who will not let the court bully them, will take things to higher courts, who bring the media in to get changes made.
All states are required to abide by federal Title IV-D laws. The feds, who pay the the majority of the child support budget, set a standard and then the states take the basic framework and add their statutes to create the child support program. Even within the state you will find individual counties do things a bit different, but still under the auspices of the state statutes and federal laws.
Did you maybe think that your child support officer was already on the phone when you called? I was phones today. 67 calls. The shortest call was about 10 minutes. This is on a team where the payor doesn’t pay. The paying teams can get up to 200 calls per day in a team of 4 workers. Granted, they’re often shorter calls, but nonetheless. I will be returning calls all day tomorrow, because that’s just the way it is.
Yes, it does. And because I value my job I do follow the rules as laid out in the terms of my employment. Don’t you do the same at your job?
I don’t disagree with you. The way it was set up was that effective 01/01/07 all NEW orders were to be set under the new laws. Every week for I don’t know how many months we’d receive memos stating “The new laws will state this” then we’d receive another memo saying “Strike that, instead the new laws will state this”. The judges / referees / magistrates needed time to learn a whole new way of calculating support.
If a person came in 01/02/07 and filed a modification the court at its’ discretion could review the order under either the old process or the new one. Some robed wonders were up to date and knew what was going on. Some weren’t.
In December 2006 the child support officers spent quite a bit of time in training to learn how to enter new orders with all their variables now allowed. Hell, it was like school again having to take tests almost daily. We were ready to roll 01/01/07.
I’m not at my job when I’m responding here. You’ve never screwed up a name? Congratulations.
What do you want me to say? Obviously, nothing I could say could budge your opinion of our agency. I DO give a damn about my clients - men / women / children. I will do anything AS ALLOWED BY THE STATUTES AND THE COUNTY RULES to help my people. I can only go by what the courts have ordered, even if I disagree with it. All I CAN tell a person is to file a motion. I can (and have) complained to the powers that be that the courts are too far behind to be useful, but I do not have control over the courts.
Cool! Then maybe I’d see some child support!
Actually, for every dollar spent in Hennepin County to collect support, over $4 is received and sent out to the other party. We’re the only social service agency that is cost efficient.
Do deviations from the state’s schedule cause problems? When my brother went through his divorce, his ex wanted a flat dollar amount. He wanted to have support by schedule with a cap, but his lawyer advised that this could cause problems with the state’s child support division.
In my state, as long as the child is not receiving public assistance–food stamps or medicaid–there is no requirement for the money to go through the state agency at all. However, if the Judge orders an amount more or less than the guidelines, he’s required to make specific findings of fact to support the deviation from the guidelines–such as special medical needs.
Both. And that remark about “followink orders” was not well advised. You aren’t winning any friends or influencing any people here, dude.
Miss Take, do you see any difference in the degree of cooperation among the so-called red states and blue states? I would’ve suspected the Republican fund their child support enforcers less well than do Democratic states, but Illinois, which you mentioned tangentially earlier, is a blue state according to electoralvote.com.
As long as what is ordered is a set amount, not a variable precentage, it’s not a problem. If we know a payors income and an order is whatever percentage of the income, we enter it as a flat sum. However, if there is fluxuation in the payors income, it becomes difficult to monitor.
The courts tend to order a percentage paid of child care, not a sum certain. In cases where that has been ordered we request receipts quarterly and mondify the set amount then.
No, there really isn’t a difference between whether a state is red or blue. The difference comes in how well the state runs its’ human/social service programs - especially welfare.
I snarkily noted Illinois primarily due to Cook County. Send a case there and you’ll never see it again. They are very behind is everything simply beacuse there isn’t enough money to fund the programs.
My cousin works for the child support program in whatever county San Jose, California is in. They are behind the times also.
But then you have Alaska, who has always been ahead of the curve in implementing new technology and trying new things.
This is all very interesting, thank you again for taking the time to answer these questions MissTake.
With bankruptcies all over the news, it made me wonder what, if anything, happens when a payor goes bankrupt?
Also, if child support enforcement comes into play when the custodial parent files for public assistance, is there anything that happens if the non-custodial parent goes on assistance? I understand that they could file to have their child support reduced, if they are on SSI or whatever then presumably they’re earning less than when the amount was set, but is there anything that causes a portion of their assistance to go to child support payments?
Child support is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. A person that files for bankruptcy gets the benefit of the “Automatic Stay”–ie. collection actions against them must stop at least temporarily, but the Stay can be lifted for purposes of collecting child support.
I was told that, as long as a person is employed, there was no option–the money MUST be deducted from the paycheck…or were you referring to the justification of deviation from the guidelines?