Where’s the evidence that the judge(s) care in the slightest about the welfare of the children? This is about taking money from the man and giving it to the woman, and whether it benefits the children in the slightest or whether the children are being well treated is apparently of little or no interest to the courts.
What’s “direct support”? If the family has cable, does each child have to be credited for a portion of that cable? What if the child plops down in front of the boob tube all night every night? What if the child doesn’t watch much TV at all? How about internet access? Grocery and household bills? Do you expect the custodial parent to keep separate accounts, instead of one checking account to pay for everything? Banks charge fees for accounts that fall below a minimum balance, you know. And who is going to pay for the court’s time?
Child support gets spent on things like rent, utilities, food, school fees, clothing and medical care. When I was getting child support, I didn’t portion out the $200 a month each child got and say, okay, you can spend $200 on clothes this month, or you can eat. It all went into the fund for paying the bills to survive. The rent was the same whether I had 2 kids or 8 if we stayed in the same place. The utilities wouldn’t have varied much if a boyfriend had moved in. So if he is paying $2500 a month, that pays for the rent and utilities and groceries to keep the kids alive and warm. If that was being spent before the brothers and sisters were born, while she was married, you didn’t expect her and the husband and the other three kids to live in the backyard. And then when she wised up and got rid of the bum, and still your kids were being housed in a place with electricity and running water. Your only objection is with the new boyfriend and his child, and you said he is getting disability payments. Are you just saying your kids would have more to eat if things were different? And a college fund? Really? You would expect people to put money into a college fund? Can you imagine what the landlord would say if you said you weren’t paying the rent this month because you had to put the money in savings instead?
Yes. she should be working…except child care for six children would just about negate whatever income she would earn until the little ones are old enough to be home alone. Yes, a woman who is still married should not be living with a guy who is still married, and supporting him even in a modest way of letting them have electricity and clean water. And she shouldn’t take away the gifts from their dad. And she should make sure ALL her kids have clothes to wear. But considering the cost of rent and utilities, how would their lives change for the better if the boyfriend and his child moved out? They’d still live in the same place, with the same siblings. Yes, it would be great if your BF got custody of his kids. but really, what are you asking? That the rest of the family live in a tent in the park? That she get a minimum wage job and spend all of it on daycare? Would that actually make the situation better? What you really want is for her to be a better, more moral, more educated and employable person. And it’s a bit too late for that.
Keep fighting to have the kids. Give them a sane, quiet place to visit, and let them know they are loved and cared for when they are with you. The teenage years are hard on relationships even when families are intact, so don’t expect them to act logically. Eventually one or more of the kids may start to ask to spend more time with dad. Don’t ever let the money issue get in the way of the relationship. If the kids think it’s all about money, they will rebel. they want you to want them because you want them…not because it will cost you less money. They know exactly what less money will mean to their little sibs. You can’t put that burden on children.
That’s how I see it too. The unfairness to Greg is his lack of custody, but the amount he’s paying in child support shouldn’t matter regardless of how many people are in the house benefitting from his dime.
If he pays less, that means his kids–who are living in a overpopulated household–get less. As it is, the amount he’s currently paying is already being used to feed and clothe non-kin, which means his kids are seeing relatively little of it. So the only thing that lowering his payment will do is make this deprivation worse.
The situation sounds completely sucky, and I hope he doesn’t give up trying to get custody.
Based on your description, I have two guesses:
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She’ll slip and fall in a post office and file a lawsuit for soft-tissue damage.
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She’ll develop some disability that qualifies for benefits and precludes her from working.
(Edited to add: I don’t want to disparage people who have legitimate injuries and disabilities since those are very real issues, but they are open to exploitation.)
This situation is unbelievably horrible, but I think the kids will come around and see how much their father did for them when they’re older.
It seems clear that what’s best for the children is to be removed from the custody of a parent who has shown no willingness or ability to bring in a wage that can support them. If the courts were operating on a basis of “what’s best for the children”, they’d be with their father.
It seems his only hope is to be ever prepared to lead them out of the hell they’ve fallen into. He needs to be prepared for a hard journey, when they do come round. In very short order, based on their ages, it won’t be about what the judge thinks but about what the kid wants. But he needs to be seriously ready, emotionally healthy, not vengeful or resentful, ragefilled or disdainful, cause the kids will read that as blame on them. He needs to have confidence in his kids, they’ll figure it out, give them time, they will come round. Till then, every time he sees them he should be asking if they have any questions. If she’s filling them with hate and misinformation, this is important. But he must be prepared to answer her charges/slams even temperedly and without casting blame or slamming her, not an easy thing, I’m sure. Open, honest, facts only. Remind them that he fought to get them, but the courts favour Mom’s a lot, sometimes it doesn’t go your way, it’s important they know he did all he could.
If you only look at money/material good, clearly yes. Ignore ‘losing’ their mother, if you will. They’ll be separated from one parent either way. But I’ve got to assume – and the social worker’s report seems to verify – that the three older children love their siblings.
So the choice comes down to:
Live with mother, and all of six of you children apparently manage to get by. You may get ragged clothes and no iPods, but apparently you’re getting a place to sleep, enough food to eat, and schooling.
Live with father, and three of you vastly improve your material lives. Good clothes, good foods, lots of toys. But no/little contact with your three younger sibs and the knowledge that not only aren’t they having it as good as you are currently, but that they are having it WORSE.
BECAUSE you aren’t with them.
You don’t think they won’t suffer guilt and shame over this? And blame the father for ‘causing’ it?
Do YOU have any siblings? Did you care at all about them?
Okay, let’s get the “did you care about your siblings” out of the way first. Having a full sibling is tooootally different than having half siblings where the other “half” is someone crazy or someone reprehensible, which is what is the situation here. My SO has 3 half siblings and wants nothing to do with them; that doesn’t make him a bad person in the slightest. Because his half siblings are through his father he’s only had to spend limited time with them, but you can be sure he didn’t want to share resources with him - which he would have had to. Nor is it unreasonable to suggest the kids are too young to know what’s best for them. If they were slightly older, its reasonable to assume they would want their father’s resources used for them (and their fellow full siblings) only.
I’m pretty sure not living in a shitty apartment and instead living with their father and his stable partner while receiving better care and a more comfortable lifestyle and a better school district (which you seem to dismiss entirely) means more than their current horrible situation with their mother popping babies out right and left. Its reasonable to assume that she’ll have more kids with the newest deadbeat.
The moral of the story is, courtesy of many dopers before me: don’t stick your dick in the crazy!
Their father didn’t cause it. Their mother did by having numerous children which she cannot support without leeching off others and the state, and further showing absolutely no will to even begin to support them financially. She’s 34, her only income is from alimony, and she’s never had a job nor looks like she’s shaping to get one. This woman is a disgrace.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. I also have a father, and don’t wish that half his paycheck is spent supporting kids and two adults who he has no connection to. Don’t you have a father?
The three kids are better off out of the situation with their father where they have a better life. The other three kids are the mother’s responsibility.
A few comments, with the classic disclaimers: I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, it may not be true for your jurisdiction, etc. But three things come to mind:
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Typically the custodial parent is required to produce an accounting of what child support was spent on, at the request/order of the court. (I.e., she need not do it unless the court orders it – but they can order it.) Greg may be entitled to oblige the court to order such an accounting. Again typically, 10% of support payments may be allocated to family support (a dwelling large enough for kids and the utility bill cost more than without, but you can hardly break that out into kids’ share and adult’s share); the remaining 90% is supposed to be spent for the kids’ necessities and if possible reasonable desires.
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Greg should be able to ask the court to appoint a guardian ad litem for the kids – this is a lawyer whose job it is to advocate specifically for the kids’ benefit and desires, and to interview them without parents present to get the answers he needs to do his job effectively. I emphasize that he would not be arguing Greg’s POV (or Susan’s) – just what is best for the kids and what they want for an outcome. In this situation it sounds like that might be appropriate.
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Cannot the judge’s custody decision be appealed, like almost every other judicial decision?
I suspect you’re confusing “half-siblings are different from full siblings” with “siblings you’ve grown up with full time are different from siblings you’ve only seen occasionally.” Your father isn’t very attached to children he saw only for brief portions of time now and then. My guess is that if he’d been been somehow separated from a full sibling so that they lived separated and only saw each other now and then, he’d be equally unattached regardless of their being ‘full sibs.’
Assuming my memory of the previous threads is accurate (not really a sure thing, I’m afraid) the three oldest children have been living with their mother for the entire life span of the three younger children. They were there when they were born, they played with them, they helped care for them, their lives were continually intermingled.
I do NOT believe children make any calculations about whether the other children in their lives had the same genetic donors as they did. A brother you knew his entire life is your BROTHER, no 'half’sies on the emotional attachment.
I also do NOT believe children adjust their feelings about their siblings bases on how ‘worthy’ their father was. :rolleyes:
And, Capt. Ridley, of course it isn’t the father’s fault. But that is likely to be how the children would see it. NOW.
As with a lot of others, I think the only hope is for the father to hang in there and trust that the children will become wiser and more open to him as they mature.
as has been said, family/child services hasn’t a goddamn thing to do with “justice,” “fairness,” or even “what’s best for the children.” It’s nothing more than a bunch of useless clock-punchers who treat other people’s lives as nothing more than a job, and just try to do what’s easiest so they can go home at the end of the day and forget about everything.
Struggle no more. You are at the wrong end of the telescope. You are trying to find fairness in a system designed quite explicitly to be utterly divorced from fairness, and to be focused on sniffing out the deepest legally available pocket to transfer wealth. Good, bad or indifferent your quest for fairness in this scenario is kind of silly. It’s like looking for fairness in a casino. The games are designed to benefit the house/state re accessing money for the children.
Per the note that it’s really being spread over 8 or 9 people that’s just a function of real life. I paid CS on two kids for 13 years. I had no illusions that I would be able to direct how the money was spent.
The saving grace is that he has only 4 and 5 years left with the 14 and 13 year old and can re-adjust the CS as each one ages out at 18. The 7 years with the 11year old will be a more bearable burden.
Once the main slug of income is gone in 5 years and times are tighter I predict bio-mommy will be glad to get the older teenagers out of the house. Also do not think that his real world financial burden will ease. Moms who were anti-dad contact will almost invariably change their tune and say “go see dad” when the money runs out and the newly adult kids are looking for money for school, and “stuff”.
I completely disagree, and have seen it quite a bit. People get married, divorced, and they have kids with new spouses. My friends have these “half” siblings that they grew up with and do NOT appreciate them the same as their “real” siblings. When you change a parent, you change the intent, and kids see these new siblings as a product of their step parent they’re not quite fond of. Social workers aren’t the brightest bulbs; if the OP could afford it, I would suggest a well respected child psychiatrist.
And as a child I most definitely adjusted my feelings about my father. In middle school I realized my mom did more of the caretaking and running the kids around and made just as much money as my dad. There was no equitable split. I never called him with a problem, and when I did, he never came through. My father thinks being a father is making money and haranguing you about your personal life. To this day, 10 years later, it holds true. Kids know when their parents are pieces of shit or if they don’t pull their own weight. Not the youngest, but the middle schoolers know.
This is just mentioned for the hell of it, and I don’t even know if it would work anymore…
A girl I dated for quite some time had a child by her ex-husband here in Minnesota. They divorced. Child Support was ordered. (All this happened before I met her.) The amount was excessive in my view, but I was an “outsider”, so I had no voice in the matter.
Anyway, her ex- got transferred to North Carolina (he was active duty Marine Corps). He took the Minnesota CS court order to a local court, and the court in North Carolina cut the amount in half even though his income stayed exactly the same.
I thoght the various States were more or less bound to honor other States’ laws, but evidently not.
I wonder if that would work today? 'Course, visitation (I loathe that word) would be problematic.
Child support IS NOT alimony. In the US, alimony is rarely awarded these days, with a few exceptions for exceptional reasons. Spousal support/alimony MIGHT be awarded to a stay at home parent, for just long enough to get a vocation degree, which is typically 18-36 months. There’s no more alimony until remarriage or death, in most cases.
Unless there is some legal exception for the military that does not sound possible to me. The NC court would have no jurisdiction in the matter. Most states follow fairly similar guidlines re authority. Here is NJ CS law that addresses the matter directly.
See
I understand your frustration, but I honestly don’t have a satisfactory answer short of giving your fellow custody, which damages the kids in its own way. You can’t honestly expect that your kids will have a vastly different lifestyle than the rest of the household, eating different food, wearing different quality and quantity of clothing, getting to take longer, hotter showers, turning on more lights, all that sort of thing. And that’s pretty well what you’re looking at in this situation if none of this child support goes to support the second husband or his kids. That’s not good for your stepkids, watching their mom and siblings get treated like second-class citizens because the stepdad sucks ass.
The easiest way I know to test whether I have reasonable attitudes and expectations about something is to reverse the positions. If the step-father was rich and everything else remained the same, would you honestly be okay with Mom giving the older kids only what they could have expected based on child support? If she, step-dad, and younger siblings were having surf and turf while your kids had Hamburger Helper, if they all wore couture and your kids’ clothes came from the mall, if the new kids had every conceivable consumer item they ever desired and your kids had to wait for birthdays and Christmas for things like a new laptop or gaming console? Most people would not be okay with this, no matter how unfair the new husband felt it was to have to support your kids. If it’s bad and wrong when it hurts your kids, it’s bad and wrong when it hurts someone else’s kids.
Yeah, except the situation is a little different. In your hypothetical the new rich hubby married the ex-wife knowing that she had kids, so he is therefore tacitly agreeing the the responsibility and all that comes with it.
In the case outlined by the op, the wife is not contributing income, it all comes from child support.