So how precisely was I not “manning up” when I acted in the best interest of my child?
What did you think would happen when you had children? That you would never have to sacrifice anything for them? That you’d never have to give anything up? That you’d some how get away without the trade-offs every human on this planet make when they bring a children into this world?
The single parents out there that are raising their children are laughing. They don’t get to work high-powered careers. They don’t get to travel overseas for months. These things are choices that you are making, and if they are choices that are not comparable with having custody of your children, then you have to realize that there will be some other trade-off. You can’t have it all. If you have children when you know you are working a career that is incompatible with raising children…what did you think was going to happen?
Did you ever think what would happen if your wife became disabled or whatever? How did you think you were going to raise the kids?
People have to make sacrifices because kids cost money. This is what normal people do. They may have to ride their bikes instead of taking the metro. They may have to bring their lunch to work. They may have to take their kids to the park instead of the movies. These are perfectly ordinary things that people with kids have to do to make it work.
If you can’t pay your rent, you need to look at other options. I promise you, there are lower rent neighborhoods in the area. You may have to give up some safety. You know what? People who don’t have the money to live in nice neighborhoods can’t live in nice neighborhoods. I know when I was growing up my mom could not afford the suburbs, so I didn’t live in the suburbs. That is life. You may need to consider a one-bedroom or roommates. Yes, that means your kids may have have to stay on an air mattress in the living. I promise you, it won’t kill them.
And really? You can’t afford ten bucks a month for Netflix. I’ve been in some tight situations, but I don’t know anyone who can’t swing ten bucks a month if it’s important to them.
I don’t know you or the details of your situation. That said, I suppose you could be said to be “manning up” because you providing more money than direct care to your children. Which was the point I was trying to make (poorly apparently).
If in one split it makes more sense for mom to have primary physical custody than dad, that is just the way it worked out. When in almost all splits that is the way it worked out, then there is probably some gender biasing going on.
Look, I will admit some of my biases are showing through here. It annoys me on several levels that kids are assumed to be the woman’s responsibility. I get a little torqued by things things as little as remarks about how I must be doing my wife a favor if I am out alone with the my two little boys. No, I am not doing her a favor, I am being a parent.
If the OP had been a little more specific about his situation and been complaining that Maryland’s formula does him a disservice because it will not account for the time he cares for the kids but they don’s spend the night I could get behind that. But I suspect that if he and his wife pooled money like a married couple but kept the current two house arrangement he wouldn’t be much better off. I seriously doubt his wife is doing as well as she was before the divorce either. Divorce sucks, unfortunately, sometimes you don’t have a choice.
It figures that when you take a family unit and divide it into two living places, the costs will double, even if you stay married.
I haven’t worked in family law for a long time, but the formula when I did took the child’s expenses and applied the parents’ income to them proportionately–so if both parties were making the same amount, the noncustodial parent would have to come up with a figure estimated to be about half the child(ren)'s expenses. And the formula for those expenses came from the income, not actual expenses.
In other words, parents who were making $250K a year would have about $75K attributed to one child, with each of them contributing half of that. Two children were a little less expensive, three even a little less, and so on, but there was a point at which somebody with a lot of children would end up owing most of their income in child support. The formula didn’t take into account how much the parents thought they needed to live on.
Also, in Colorado, when people divorce, the agreement makes a particular reference to college expenses, and one of them must shoulder that burden. Whereas if you stay married you don’t have to guarantee anything toward your kids’ college education.
What they are trying to do is equalize things so that neither party suffers more than the other, financially, from the divorce, which never works. Obviously people with two incomes are going to be more stretched when they have two residences than if they had one.
Every divorced man I know has claimed to feel the effects of burdensome child support, while every divorced woman I know has claimed to suffer from its lack. This is a known and predictable effect of divorce, and you have to ask, is the divorce worth it?
Can anyone explain the reasoning behind this? College is an adult expense unless the kid is a child prodigy right?
Non-divorced parents could also start a fund to help with the child’s wedding or down payment of a first house. But these are adult purchases.
Not 100%. It’s sort of in between. While a parent isn’t legally required to help out with college, parental income is included in the calculation for financial aid.
I believe my child support commitment runs through undergrad. That may be revisited, because if my son is living away at college, I think the support should go to him.
How would the father having 50% custody NOT be in the best interest of the child? Why is it always automatically assumed that kids are better off with their mother? What made Edward’s wife just assume that she could leave and take the kids with her, and expect to keep them without granting the father equal time?
I think it’s usually in the best interest of the child to have both parents equally present in their life. Why assume that if the father wants equal time he’s only doing it for his own benefit? These attitudes are why the system is so skewed against men.
I explained how it wasn’t a viable situation for me. I finish work late, and go in early. I work weekends. I travel internationally.
Yes I could have taken a different job. However, that would have reduced the income available to my son, and also might not have been feasible given the law school debt I incurred before getting divorced.
My son living with me 50% of the time would not be in his best interests, all things considered.
I can’t speak for other people’s situations, but then again, nor can you. Let’s treat child custody cases as individual situations, affecting real people, rather than using presumptions and generalizations. And certainly don’t recommend joint physical custody to someone because the alternative is to be poor. Recommend it because it is good for the child.
So what you are doing, as I have said twice, is paying your wife for the time you aren’t spending with your children. It is a choice. I am a professional person that works 50 plus hours per week but there was no way in hell I was not going to get joint custody with shared residence of my daughter. We had a four day three day alternating schedule. In the morning I dropped my daughter off at a sitter who took her to school, in the evening the same woman picked her up or a family member or even my ex husband would help out until I got home. If it was my parenting time, and she got sick, I was the one who called in and took her to the doctor.
At 6:45 in the evening you still have plenty time to be with your children. (This is if your employer won’t allow you to adjust your schedule a couple of days per week. Have you inquired?) You can check homework, give baths and have that time. Would you have to get up at 5am? Sure but you do what you have to do. Have you even looked into a private person to help you out with before and after school care? I would guess you have not. I am sorry if you feel defensive but the simple truth is you are their father and should be spending equal time. It bothers me that you’re complaining more about the money than the issue of not seeing your children practically every day.
Since I make more than my ex, I had to pay him a small amount each month but nothing like what you are going to be responsible to pay. Everything was split and pretty much equal and no one had “visitation” with their own child. If you want to make it work, you can. If you don’t, you pay for someone else to take the majority of responsibility of raising your children. What shocks me is that the courts don’t insist on this because it is so much better for the children.
And unless the student is over 25, married, or a veteran parental income is a factor in financial aid regardless of whether the parent actually gives any support. There is such a thing as a dependency override (which means the student is treated like an orphan or independent adult for aid purposes), but those can be very, very hard to get.
I knew some people in college who’s parents bascially disowned them, were completely on their own, and ran into all sorts of problems getting financial aid.
The ideal behind child suipport is the child’s “quality of life” or “lifestyle” should not change because of the divorce.
It seems that the OP wasn’t living beyond his means, but the family was living AT the income level of two incomes
Now that your going to divorce the court is going to take a very dim view on any parent who is going to try to lower the quality of that child’s lifestyle.
I was wondering about this, too. What is your workplace environment like for single parents? Are there any mothers there or people looking after elderly parents who have been allowed some flexibility? You might be worried about coming off looking bad or unprofessional but, well, that is what half of America has been complaining about for some time now. Yes, the distribution seems a bit wonky (though, as others have pointed out, living apart does not mean expenses are halved – though you’re right that a roomie doesn’t sound ideal), but I can’t help but feel that this is the bed we’ve made, a society that hasn’t evolved along with the changing stricture of families.
Any chance of moving to Scandinavia?
You still seem to be misisng the point here. “I work weekends” is not a physiological handicap that makes you a suboptimal parent. It’s a choice just like any other: You chose to keep your job over keeping custody of your kid. This isn’t a judgement, but a fact. Maybe it works to your child’s benefit, but maybe not.
Consider this: If your ex suddenly took a lucrative job that required her to work weekends, long hours, and travel extensively, what would her options be? To give your kid up for adoption and cut the recipient parents a check every month? I think we can all agree that this would be drastic and unlikely to be in the child’s best interest. But essentially, this is the choice you made.
I think when it comes to mothers and fathers, the former is a lot less likely to see losing custody of the kids as a viable option. Having the kids is the central priority around which all other things are negotiated. Men, rightly or wrongly, are the opposite.
wrong.
joint custody is ka-ka. what makes you think that two **divorced **parents are capable of effectively and jointly making each and every decision regarding their kids?
they aren’t. which is why joint custody sounds great and fine in theory, but blows in practice, and it’s why joint custody shouldn’t be the default. it’s far too easy to revert to petty games and use child decisionmaking as a weapon against another spouse.
and there is no modern presumption that the kids are better off with the mother. it’s just overwhelmingly the case that most of the time mom has a larger role in the upbringing of young children, so it’s better that that link survives.
as for the OP: I sympathize to some degree, and to the extent that your child support calculations are correct (over 50% income seems a bit harsh and, to me, incorrect but i don’t know you or your case or maryland child support law) you’re just going to have to get used to downgrading your lifestyle.
in general terms, I would prefer writing child support laws to ensure that child support sums are maximally used for the child’s benefit, and minimally used to support the custodial spouse and their new paramour (to the extent that those expenditures are severable). However, putting that kind of oversight into the law is extremely costly in terms of complexity, efficiency, and time.
Those two sentences are contradictory. You are basically saying there is no presumption that the mother should get custody, but usually she should. If nothing else, you are presuming that the mother should get custody.
no, a presumption is completely different from an observational statement of what generally is the case.
try again.
Edward, hope you’ve negotiated an agreement on who gets the tax deduction, otherwise you may not have seen the end of the surprises.
Exactly this. The custodial parent picks up most of the slack in both time and money. When a child is sick, who is more likely to stay home, when a couple is married? Who is EXPECTED to stay home, and use his/her sick or personal days for the child? Who is expected to take the child(ren) for routine medical checkups? Sometimes, both parents step up and get these chores done. But even now, it’s still USUALLY the mother who takes the kids to appointments, who does the shopping, etc.
Bolding mine.
Or to paraphrase, “There is no presumption, but due to observation, there should be a presumption.”
Can you explain how I could deal with the debt load I incurred while still married and do another job?
I never stated it wasn’t a choice. And all I ever said was you cannot make blanket judgments about custody, and it should be done on what is in the best interests of the child. Had I thought me taking another job, defaulting on debt, and having full or joint physical custody would have been in my son’s best interests, that is what I would have pursued. I considered the options and decided our current situation was the one in his best interests. He was the central priority, and continues to be, for both my ex and myself (well not so much for her as she has another child to consider - so he is the central priority for me, and a central priority for her).
Decisions like this are not made in vacuums. You don’t wake up on the day of separation/divorce with a clean slate. Decisions you made as a couple, while still happily married, have effects which continue into the divorce period. And one of those choices involved me going to law school as a mature student.