sorry. i didn’t see that you actually tried to explain. i figured you were going on another tangent.
So, what if it’s deadbeat (i.e. not willing to work) dad with no brood of his own, Susan, and the greg/susan triplets?
and greg chose to go to Korea. and chose to go live in DC.
Why? It’s a hypothetical, not reality. Perhaps that’s why Nyctea has been getting a bit defensive here.
I have a suggestion: everybody, including Nyctea, needs to stop “re-litigating” the past, pointing fingers and placing blame. It’s a worthless endeavor that not only gets nowhere, but just causes uproars and hurt feelings.
Done is done. Now is the time to focus on how to proceed moving forward.
Nyctea and her boyfriend have just been through an extremely stressful situation with a heartbreaking outcome. Beating her and her boyfriend up is counterproductive, even if you (general “you”) are “right”.
Being “high and mighty” might make you feel better, but it’s just unnecessary feather-puffing and makes you look arrogant.
JMNSHO. Carry on.
Look, I probably wouldn’t have come here and “beat her and her boyfriend up” if some the first words in her post weren’t
it’s an extremely ignorant statement and wholly indicative of her bias in this matter. I don’t coddle ignorance and bias, and I don’t think my stomping all over it (or at least attempt to ) is indicative of being high and mighty.
It has become the train wreck I can’t look away from.
My sentiments, too. Nyctea was looking for advice on handling the situation she and her boyfriend are in. She obviously thinks that Susan is a dirtbag and that Greg is a caring father, so what’s the matter with saying so? And why should we disbelieve her?
I have much sympathy for Nyctea and Greg, but, unfortunately, I can’t offer any helpful advice as I am unfamiliar with the legal aspects of child support. I have a good friend in a similar (but much less hostile) situation, so I know it’s frustrating.
Did you perhaps consider that it was a bit of hyperbole based on her extreme stress and sadness over just losing a battle that cost her boyfriend custody of his children? When one is in the situation, all kinds of things can feel like truths in general, as opposed to just specific to your circumstance. And when one feels wronged, it makes the wrong sting less to feel as if it’s a universal truth than something about you, personally.
This may be the Straight Dope, but the sub-forum we’re on is MPSIMS, not Great Debates or The BBQ Pit. Obviously I’m not a moderator (as IF), so I have no authority to tell you what to do, but if you wanted to refute the veracity of her claim, starting a thread in GD and asking Nyctea to come discuss it with you without making it personal would have actually been a better way to “educate” people if you think the facts are on your side. But if you just wanted to “stomp all over it”, perhaps you should have started a Pit thread.
Just another anecdotal data point that, in my experience, the police just simply won’t get involved in enforcing court orders pertaining to civil matters.
If one of the parents refuses to send the kids on court ordered visitation (or put them on a plane, or whatever), if you call the police in my jurisdiction, they will say, “I’m sorry, we won’t get involved in this”… I can see their position; they simply cannot be arbiters that read through written court orders and determine whether or not they’re being properly followed in these family-based disputes (which often have a lot of petty squabbling and vengeful motives behind them), particularly when there is (eventual) re-dress available in the courts. (And yes, I know that re-dress is painfully slow, expensive, and usually results in diddly-squat for consequences imposed).
I’ve seen this happen to a couple people I know.
The whole situation does suck, and nyctea, I do feel for you and Greg.
And that very well may happen to Greg if he tries it, too. But. . . if he notifies Susan that he will be arriving at X:00 on Y date to pick his children up, he shows up on time, and she refuses to turn the children over, or just isn’t there at all, calling the police and at least making a report of it will be a critical piece of documentation that will prove to the court that Greg is being truthful and Susan is not in compliance. If the police won’t come out in person, Greg needs to go to the station and fill out a written report and get a copy for his records. And he needs to make a copy of his phone records as soon as the bill is available to prove that he phoned the police on Y date at X:00.
Document, document, document.
Disbelieving wholesale, no. Clearly Greg cares about his children* to an extent*. But despite the wretched picture painted of the Horrible Slovenly Neglectful Harridan Ex-Wife from Hell, I’m inclined to disbelieve that the reality of Susan is the thoughtless, careless, incapable, incompetent parent she’s being painted as.
And that’s mainly for this reason: her life, as described by the utterly unsympathetic OP, would be full measures better if she gave up custody of her three kids with “Greg” and moved into a smaller, more affordable home with her three whose papa is in prison. Simple math tells us that, caring for three kids is a lot easier than caring for six, even without Greg’s child support (without it, her access to additional social services would increase, especially since kids 4 - 6 have an incarcerated parent). But it seems pretty clear that she’s trying her damnedest to keep her family intact even though she’s entirely in the weeds. That means all of the siblings. If the kids are with her, they have a Mom and their brothers/sisters. If the kids are with Greg, they just have Dad. The loss to the kids by moving to where Dad’s gone is far more substantial than the OP seems to want to acknowledge.
The reality is, Susan and her children (all six of them) would be entirely better off if Greg, our alleged model of fatherly virtue, weren’t 2,500 frickin’ miles away. If he had prioritized actively co-parenting his children and was providing generously of his time, with regular, actual hands-on involvement that cannot be substituted with phone calls, video chats and e-mails, these things he’s blaming on Susan and her sad circumstances (the school failures, the lack of communication, the sullen withdrawals, the visitation nightmares) would be substantially mitigated. But Greg wants to cling to his “I only have a career in one city in the entirety of America” fiction (and yes, that’s fiction) thus, this familial crisis will rage on. I’m having a hard time finding sympathy for any of the adults here.
Using the police to document failures of compliance with a civil court order is a misuse of police resources. In most jurisdictions, failure to comply with a custody/visitation agreement is not a criminal matter. Document with phone recordings, photographs, video. You don’t use the police to get into the middle of baby mama drama.
To quote Shayna some more, “This. 1000 times, this.” Thus far the courts have apparently let Susan do whatever she likes, which must be nightmarish. That doesn’t mean that it is impossible to ever get a fair shake, and viewing things that way will only hinder effective decision-making. (I’m not trying to threadshit, sincerely. This is all so recent and painful that it must be hard not to throw up your hands and give in to despair.)
Also, the boyfriend is presented as a resource-draining parasite living off Greg’s child support, but surely there must be some upside for a woman with six young children to have another adult in the house. Even if he’s not helping the kids build dioramas for their homework projects or whatever, he’s most likely doing things as basic as looking after them while Susan is out grocery shopping or whatever. I’m not saying the guy is Mr. Mom or that he shouldn’t get a job; I’m just saying that he may well be enriching the lives of Greg’s children and not spending all day playing with his iPhone and gleefully rolling around on a carpet of Greg’s money.
As usual I know very little about anything, but one of the things I learned from acting is that when your head is wrecked, one of the most useful questions to ask yourself is:
What’s your objective here?
Seriously. What do you want to accomplish? Not ‘What do you wish the courts would do?’ or ‘What do you wish Susan would do?’ or ‘What do you wish any of the above had done along the way?’ but what do *you *(and Greg) want to accomplish?
I ask because it seems like you’re spending an awful lot of time and energy fixating on how unfair it is that Greg’s child-support money gets spread over the whole household - to the point where you actually came up with a formula for exactly how much is being ‘stolen’. I don’t know whether it’s fair or not, but it seems to me that that doesn’t matter either way. What matters is: what are you accomplishing by pouring so much time and energy into this outrage? What goal is it moving you towards? How do you feel this will make things better? The same goes for building up a good head of steam over how awful Susan is and how the courts should have given Greg custody. Again, she may well be awful, or she may not, but either way, how does focusing on that help anything at all?
While Greg was fighting his custody battle - which it seems like he did wholeheartedly and passionately - then both of your objective was obviously to win that battle. He lost. You’re acting (well, posting) like your objective is still ‘to win the custody battle’ - which is impossible - or like it’s ‘to make Susan become a different person with fewer kids’ (also impossible).
Try pinning down your objective. If it’s something like ‘To make sure that Greg is as big a part of his children’s lives as possible’ or ‘To make Greg’s kids’ lives better’, then each time you take a step, think about it: does this move me closer to my objective, or farther away from it, or does it just waste my energy? (For example, how does obsessing over Susan’s expenditure patterns make Greg closer to his kids, or make their lives better? Same for spending time getting all outraged over the custody decision: how does that either bring Greg closer to his kids or make things better for them?)
This may sound like actor wank, but it does help, if you’re getting stuck fixating on what other people should be doing rather than on what you can do, or if you’re getting caught up in thought patterns that aren’t useful.
I get the feeling that Greg isn’t exactly thrilled to be on the opposite side of the country away from his children. But it would make his life a hell of a lot more comfortable if he at least knew his boys were doing well in school, living in a functional household and that their mother wasn’t forced to use child support money to support a deadbeat boyfriend.
I know you said “in most jurisdictions,” but in some states the police can enforce visitation rights. And in some cases there are criminal remedies.
Understood and agreed. I don’t think at this point there’s anything Greg can do about the financial situation. I’m just saying I understand the OP being pissed about how Susan’s use of the money is not to the benefit of Greg’s kids.
Is this really true? (I’m not arguing, I’m curious.) Could she really find herself in a better situation without the $2,500? Sure she could move into a more affordable home, but both she and her boyfriend have no jobs, and she would be left with the three younger kids (the kids who would be in need of daycare.)
Also, wouldn’t her $700 in welfare go down if she has fewer kids?
I really don’t know as I’m not familiar with the whole welfare set up.
I mean, Greg’s kids are the older kids, the kids needing less supervision, they’re in school, they don’t need day care. So if the older kids, and Greg’s child support money, were gone, it just seems to make sense that she would be worse off financially.
I don’t think the kids need daycare, with two unemployed adults in the house.
Unless she has additional income to contribute to the rent, and according to the OP she doesn’t, Greg’s child support money is supporting the other children.
Again, what you’re not comprehending, is that I’m not arguing that the other family members cannot derive some benefit from child support monies. With $2500 from Greg and $700 from welfare, the bulk of Greg’s money is paying for most of the home expenses, including most of the cost of food and shelter for the others, not “a small subset”.
The court decided that Greg should support his children at the rate of $2500 per month. There’s no way Susan can support the other 8 people in the home on $700 per month from welfare. So, Greg’s money is being used to feed and cloth the other kids (wasn’t it six kids besides Greg’s 3?) and the deadbeat boyfriend. So if the primary benefit of the $2500 isn’t to Greg’s kids, it is to their detriment.
The math wasn’t loose and unintelligent, it was clear and sensible. I know you don’t care, it doesn’t support your point of view.
The latest court sessions were over custody, not over child support. Support was set before, possibly before Susan decided to support 7 more people. The OP brought the current support situation up as a side issue. It’s been pointed out that the courts will not address this. The point is that in a case like this, Greg’s kids are not receiving the benefits of the support, and the court should address this. And since they don’t and usually won’t, the OP, and others, have a right to feel that this is wrong.
More nonsense. We’re not talking about the difference between solid white albacore and chunk lite tuna. We’re taking about food and shelter and all the other expenses of support, on $10 per day per person. Good luck with that.
You might be right about the threshold for adequate care, if we were talking about DSS looking into charges of neglect. In cases of child support, heard in family court, the bar is set higher when circumstances permit. Such as in your example of the multimillionaires. If they were to divorce, and support was being determined, the supporting parent would not get away with support which would feed the children on a level as if they were living on food stamps.
You caught the fact that Susan has moved the kids from one coast to another on two occasions, right? And that staying close to the kids thus means that Greg would have to be prepared to change jobs and move wherever (including up to 3000 miles) as often as it might suit Susan to do so?
Maybe that is indeed your view, but if so I think you should address this fact directly. Otherwise, you’re glossing over the fact that you’re calling upon Greg to live a life of constant and complete uncertainty.
Yes, I didn’t quite make the full connection on that thought. Unemployed adults does equal no daycare. 
I guess I was just thinking that it would be the kids who might potentially need *less * of Susan’s time especially during the day (Greg’s kids - in school) who would be the kids leaving in Tumbledown’s hypothesis. I wasn’t sure if Greg’s kids leaving/no child support really would mean things would be easier for Susan.
Court approval is needed to remove children from a jurisdiction (at least in the one I’m familiar with). It’s only done so when it’s in the best interests of the child (now, of course, if Greg’s attorney didn’t take care to put this in the order…)
I don’t want to hazard a guess as to the real reasons Susan had a sudden bout of wanderlust, and I’m not going to query the OP for elaboration on this issue.
If the custody agreement does not enjoin the party with primary physical custody from moving the children further than a certain number of miles from their current residence without prior written approval by the non-custodial parent and/or the court, I’d recommend trying to have it modified to include that, prior to actually moving to where the children currently reside.
Custodial parents can also be enjoined from traveling outside a certain area without prior written notification to the non-custodial parent.