you are mistaking a positive statement for a normative one.
it is undeniably true that in most divorce/child custody cases already adjudicated, the mother has the stronger attachment to the child, making it in the child’s best interest that mom receive primary custody. this has nothing to do with presumptions, or what we ought to believe about a new set of spouses entering the courthouse for the first time. it just is what it is. it’s offered as an explanation for why kids end up with their mom most of the times.
Look, I don’t know your individual home life situation. You may very well be right; your decision to give up custody may be more beneficial to your child than splitting it.
However, the explanations you state in defense of your choices aren’t exactly persuading me that having custody is anywhere close to an untenable option in your case. Plenty of parents–both single and coupled–have to deal with debt while raising kids. So how do they do it? I mean, a fraction of them might choose to let their kid live with grandma for an indefinite time period so they can save money or get a more demanding but better paying job. But I’m betting that the vast majority either 1) manage to juggle kids and debt at the same time, even if it means staying in debt for 30 plus years and living in a two bedroom apartment versus a McMansion or 2) take care of the kids and if need be, let their credit score take a few hits if the bill can’t be paid that month. There are worse things in the world than defaulting on a loan.
You’re asking us to accept that the high-demanding job you have right now is the only one in existence that could allow you to survive. This is a tough sell.
That seems like a crazy position to take. Given that the parents now have to support two households, how could “lifestyle” (as in, the amount of money you have to spend on stuff) not take a hit? Having the same proportion of the total income available to the kids is a reasonable goal - having the kids’ lifestyle stay exactly the same seems like a recipe for keeping the non-custodial parent in complete penury.
ISTM that the problem in the OP’s case is not really the way child support is calculated. The problem is - he didn’t actually want to get separated or divorced (right?). So all this extra money has to be found to support his ex-'s lifestyle goal of not living in the same house as the OP. That would have to be pretty galling.
Is it me, or is this basically the shocking blow of learning, a 1200 square foot private home, retirement savings, private schools, are not actually entitlements, but, as for many, unaffordables?
Yeah, it’s a drag to have to downsize your lifestyle when shit happens, but shit happens to everybody.
I was especially struck that while screaming too poor to pay utilities, you seem to consider retirement savings an essential. Sounds a little entitled to me, is all. There are a zillion people who can’t save for retirement because they have bills to pay.
If your spouse had died, instead of just getting a divorce, would you have changed your work routine for your child?
In my case, my ex-husband getting 50% custody (which he did not want)would not have been good for the kids if he had kept the lifestyle he was leading. They would have been around a drunken partying parent and a new spouse who openly hated our kids. If he had been a responsible person, maybe it would have worked…lord knows his abandonment of them did lots of damage.
And the $200 a month per child that he paid, sometimes, didn’t do much to help. Maybe you could just look at it differently…be glad you make enough money to be able to pay $2000 a month! And that you will have many more years to save for retirement. I have, oh…$1 in retirement savings, and I’m 53!
Like someone has already said, that is median household income. (Just rounding) your household income used to be $200,000. With that $200,000 you had a residence for yourself, your wife, and two kids. You had utility bills and all expenses for the four of you under one household’s income.
With a divorce you’re now going from a $200,000 household income (which is 100% higher than the median) to two $100k household incomes. Unfortunately, $100k doesn’t go as far in two separate houses as $200k does in one house. There are certain economies of scale in being married (or with having roommates or anyone you can share household expenses with.)
Simple fact of the matter is don’t expect to live the same life you lived before. If you and your wife just were on your own it might have been possible. But with kids it’s probably far too expensive for both of you to individually have two homes equal to the one you shared as a married couple.
Just as an example, imagine your wife and you never got divorced. But instead you bought a second house, you don’t move into that house, but you hook up all the utilities and let’s say you let someone live there for free who runs up two-people’s worth of utility expenses in the second house.
What happens? Well, you probably are going to experience economic hardship because you’re trying to cover a lot more expense with the same income.
Further, your average county income listing includes a lot of moderately well off suburbs of D.C. Sadly, not everyone can afford to live in the nice D.C. area suburbs, a lot of people (the 19% of the D.C. area that lives under the poverty line) probably don’t live in nice housing in the burbs. Further, all the college kids, young people detached from parents and et cetera, aren’t living single in houses with room for four people.
Absolutely I would have changed my work routine - because that would have been in the best interests of my son. That’s all I am asking - that custody decisions be made with the best interest of the children. The idea that joint physical custody is always the right thing to go for is what I am complaining about. Moreover, the frankly ridiculous idea that someone should go for joint physical custody in order to reduce the amount of child support they are required to pay amazes me. Each situation is different, and should be approached based on its own circumstances and what is in the best interests of the child.
I don’t know where you are getting a $2000 figure - I have never mentioned the amount I pay. And I don’t begrudge a penny of it. I have never sought to reduce it, and in fact have voluntarily increased it at various stages. I’m sorry your ex was such an asshole. But there really is no need to project that onto my situation.
I think you’re correct that this is the “ideal”, but I vehemently disagree that it should be so. Why should the child’s lifestyle be sacred while the parents are reduced to poverty so as to support it? It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
[If I was writing the laws I would say - among other things - that child support should max out at the level where the kid will not suffer from malnutrition and the like. IOW, at the point where DYFS would not intervene if it were an intact family. Anything more than that is gravy. I imagine a lot of non-custodial parents would want to pay more, especially if their exes encouraged a meaningful role in the kids’ lives. But I don’t see any reason to oblige more.]
Based upon what the OP has stated, I would agree that the Maryland laws should be changed to account for all time that the kids are in the parents custody…not just to consider where they sleep.
If the amount of time they are in the father’s custody vs. the mother’s custody is 50/50, and they make roughly the same amount, then no child support should be paid by either parent. If the one parent’s income is significantly greater than the other, and the time spent is still 50/50, then the higher paid parent, should be paying the lower paid parent some form of child support.
The problem, that I see, is the way the State defines “time in custody” as overnight with a particular parent.
Counted by the hour? Do you count the 10-11 hours the kids are asleep? If you count the time getting ready for bed, sleeping, and getting ready in the morning – isn’t that the majority of non-school hours? (Weekends excluded, of course.)
Counting overnights is an easy and clear thing to identify and track. It should be accurate for the majority of the cases. Adding up hours here and there gets trickier and the onus would be on all cases – not just the ones that would benefit from the increased granularity.
Years ago when I was in a similar situation what amazed me was that the calculation for my child support included the money I was losing on the investment properties I owned with my soon to be ex-wife. So, although I was paying out money to maintain our investments, I had to pay a percentage of what I was losing to my wife each month, because it was treated as though I was not losing it. So I had to borrow money to pay my child support.
My wife got the investment properties in the divorce settlement.
I agree with you that for the majority of cases where Dad only sees his kids two weekends a month and for 2 weeks in the summer, that just counting the nights is simple and generally acceptable and approximates the actual time spent.
But in the OP’s case where he is essentially their after school day care every evening, so his ex-wife can work late and he then takes them home to be put to bed…results in a grossly unfair economic outcome. Maybe his lawyer should be doing a better job of negotiating a fairer settlement for his particular case.
Well, “It’s not feasible to have my children stay overnight” is some pretty weak shit. I knew a lot of divorced kids, and some of their parents lived in small, shitty apartments, or even had roommates, and they found it “feasible” to have their kids over for 24 hours at a time.
It can be unfair, but I don’t think it is grossly unfair.
I don’t know enough about the OP’s situation so consider this hypothetical: Parent A picks the kids up from school and watches them from 3pm to 8pm. Parent A drops them off at Parent B’s house. Parent B puts the kids to bed and gets them ready for school. Parent B has them from 8pm to 8am.
In this case, Parent B has them for 12 hours compared to Parent A’s 5 hours – that’s more than double the hours. To get any increase in fairness over the nighttime rule, you would have to count down to the hour. Consider what a mess that would be for couples that are already estranged. Then multiple that by every divorced couple (I assume the law has to treat all cases equally).
If you are counting hours, do you also have to count travel times from Parent A to Parent B’s house? Do you split the difference 50/50? What if one parent wants to move? Do they take more of the split? Using an hour granularity is a logistical nightmare.
And this is all ignoring the point that Parent B has the kids all night. They need to be home (or pay for a sitter). They can’t go grocery shopping, run errands, go out – nothing. They have the kids for 12 hours in each 24 hour period. Subtracting for work, commutes, getting ready – how much time do they have left in the day?
Parent A on the other hand has the kids for 5 hours in a 24 hour period. Even after time spent at work, commuting, eating, and getting ready – they still have time for errands.
And here’s the reason why, and I know this as I just did it yesterday. My wife had to be at work at 7, the oldest can’t get to school until 7:45. So I took her at 7:45, rushed to catch the last train just after 8 and made it to work at 9. I can’t leave until 5:30, but the soonest train to then is 6 so I don’t get home until 6:45, hence I can’t see my children except for an hour or so in the morning and that’s it. I could do this, but I would spend less time with them then I do now. That also means that there would have to be after after school care, costing more. So please don’t say it’s ‘some weak shit’ just because of how it works for me.
I know, I could drive, but in the DC area it would take me well over an hour to get to work, I would be late, I would pay for parking and gas, and there’s still the hour plus to get home. My situation works out fine for the both of us, and has for years. So yeah I could do all that, but it would just make things worse not better.
When I was divorced (against my will) I was pretty much making minimum wage. My wife had a live in boyfriend at her place, never cleaned the place up, the kids were always at a friends so she could go out at night, and she had no job.
I still had my job and had Social services at my door at all hours for “inspections”.
The judge at the hearing actually awarded her custody because (I’m not kidding, I have the transcripts) “You sir, have a job and that’s commendable, but you can be fired or laid off. She will have her welfare as long as she continues to keep the paperwork current, so I find her to be the more reliabe guardian of the children”.
KMy child support was set at about $75 more per month than I made, and the judge said “well, you may need to improve your station”.
I don’t think you are going to win with the “I had a kid, now I’m pissed because I’m broke” thing. That’s not a new and unique story. Do you have any idea how few parents get the luxury of not struggling financially? Having kids is practically synonymous with having to make tough budget choices- choices which are usually stunningly more difficult that what to do about homes in exclusive high-end suburbs and double-digit private schools.
I live in DC. I live in somebody’s basement. This is because I don’t have money to afford a nice place. You also don’t have money to afford a nice place. Welcome to life.
This is why our parents tell us to think before we get knocked up. This is where the saying “After you have kids, nothing is the same” comes from. This is why they say parenting changes your priorities forever. This is why people talk about having to give up some of their career for the sake of their family.These things apply to well-off people, too!
I think what is confusing people is that you seem to consider your children your last priority- you will try to include them in your life only if everything else is taken care of. Most people will go through hell or high water to be a part of their kid’s lives. You seem much more interested in your career, your house, etc. You just want the kids to be there without having to actually DO too much about it, even if all you have to do is cut a check.
I know you did not want to make this personal. But when you are complaining about how your kids don’t let you maintain a lifestyle that most people on this board could only dream of, you are going to get some flack.
I wasn’t complaining about finances. I was complaining about the judge giving a lazy self centered woman custody of children she apparently only wanted for the welfare checks, while screwing the father who worked to support them.
And I have seen many examples of this same thing since it happened to me.