it is immaterial that the others are getting shelter. shelter is a binary. it either exists or it doesn’t. couching his support money in terms of being used to provide shelter for others, while also sheltering his kids, is just wrong.
are greg’s kids malnourished? are they dying of exposure because they don’t have housing? are they showing up to school in rags? no.
they’re receiving the benefits of the support.
they’re just not receiving what greg/op believe is adequate support. BFD. they don’t get to make that decision, and it’s not wrong that someone with no legal custody over the child should have any say in that decision making.
do you have evidence that greg’s children are in need of anything? no.
you’re just upset that funds that may or may not be used to provide luxuries (which, incidentally, mom gets to decide. by herself) to greg’s kids aren’t being so used.
cite? the bar is exactly set at what is or isn’t neglecting your kids, since it’s the exact same standard that is required for the state to act as parens patriae and strip the custodial parent’s constitutional right to raise their kids as they see fit.
i’m not talking about divorce and the resultant child support amounts (which incidentally if the NCP is broke and the CP was the millionaire, the children would still be living like paupers, and the courts couldn’t do anything about it). i’m talking about where, constitutionally, the courts have a right to step in and say “you need to spend more on your kids”.
child support monies are typically calculated based on the NCP’s income, let’s for convenience say 25% of your monthly income.
NCP has a monthly income of $100,000 (assume court hasn’t issued an order finding that lower child support payments are acceptable), so is coughing up 25k per month in child support.
one kid. lets say he’s 1 years old.
do you think there is a problem if custodial parent spends the majority of that money renting out a 20000 a month mansion which is ostensibly not being used for the kid? what do you think is acceptable in this case? buy the kid a solid gold potty lest mom benefit from the child support?
what if mom has 10 other children from 10 other marriages. and a useless husband to boot. what do you do with the 25k?
This could be an interesting thought experiment, though most of these questions are already answered by either state or federal law. Since we are, again, throwing out hypotheticals not related to this particular thread, might I suggest you move this to its own thread so y’all can hash it out, demand and provide cites, and so on?
But the moves did happen (unless the OP is lying, in which case this whole thread is a waste of time), so either the court is permitting them or choosing to discount them. So Greg has had to and presumably will continue to have to deal with them.
You’ve accused the OP of presenting a one-sided view of the facts. If you’re not prepared to acknowledge the hardship these particular facts place on Greg, I think you run the risk of doing the same.
Shelter is not a binary. Shelter could be a hovel or a mansion. Minimal shelter for 11 people is not the same as minimal shelter for 4.
Malnourished or exposure or rags isn’t the level the court set support at. It’s not a question of what Greg thinks is adequate support. They’re not receiving even a fraction of the support the court set for Greg’s children. The court didn’t set this level of support to feed and shelter 11 people.
We’re not talking luxuries here. There are no luxuries at the level of support being discussed.
You represented that support is set at neglecting the kids. Cite? Support would be minimal in all cases if that was true. Support levels vary widely case to case.
I didn’t say you were talking about divorce. I said that in the event of a divorce, the courts would not set support at the level you set in your hypothetical case. I’m not interested in discussing hypothetical cases, where any combination of circumstances can be proposed until there’s no relevance to the original discussion.
I understand the court isn’t going to address this. (Although, if he could afford to proceed, he might be able to make some progress. Not that that is in the interests of Greg or his children). My point is that what Susan is doing is wrong.
In all fairness, through the first several choruses of “OMG, EVIL BITCH EX-WIFE IS STEALING FROM SO AND DESTROYING CHILDREN’S LIVES” people were thoroughly empathetic and kind, even when every suggestion was met with a litany of reasons why they wouldn’t be any help. You can only go through that cycle so many times before people stop feeling bad for you, ya know?
Yes, the situation sucks, but the plain simple fact of the matter is that Greg has contributed to this mess. He married this woman. He chose not to take even partial responsibility for birth control after the first or second pregnancy. He chose a career path that made it difficult to be an actively involved parent to his children in their formative years. He chose to make a major life change based on the plans of someone who would seem to be unreliable, and move a continent away from his children. If he’s a victim, it’s of his own bad choices; between that and the fact that OP handwaves away his bad choices while using Susan’s bad choices as evidence that she’s a total waste of skin and oxygen, it makes it hard to feel all that sorry for either of them.
Yes, the situation sucks and should be different. Lots of situations in this world suck and should be different. As the wise man once said, should in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up first. You just have to let it go, pull up your big kid underpants, and make the best you can out of what you have. And right now what they have is three kids for whom he’s never been the primary parent, hitting that age when kids think even the parents they’re close to are lame and develop active contempt for absentee parents, on the other side of the frigging continent, whose only stability in the past few years has been their mom and siblings being there, and who spent the last 2 years faced with the prospect of losing even that. About the best you can hope for out of the near future is that the kids just think you’re normal parent-level lame. There is, after all, dick-all to be done about the parenting history, their ages, the distance, or the upheaval they’ve gone through in the last couple of years, so you just have to ride out these rough years as best you can and try to build a foundation for a future relationship.
I’m sure it would. But you know what, this shouldn’t be about what makes Greg more comfortable. Greg and Susan and the OP? Least important people in the equation. What Greg wants and what makes Greg happy doesn’t mean diddly.
Like I said, that’s presuming that with the loss of income her access to various social services and entitlements increases. While the size of the household is taken into consideration, if the household income is suddenly 1/4 of what it was (and via TANF at that) then access to WIC, food stamps, Section 8, Medicaid and more open up.
The OP talks about gender bias, but I can’t imagine a mother making the same choices that Greg did and still saying with a straight face that she has been the best parent she can be. He certainly has been the best bread-winner that he can be, but that’s not the same thing as being a parent. Unfortunately, he really hasn’t proven that he’s the better parent, and not for a lack of opportunity. He had that opportunity before they were divorced but he didn’t take it. And the court is unwilling to gamble on him being better, when they have no historical evidence to support that.
It certainly sounds like she’s paired up with some bad characters and made some crappy decisions in the last several years, not denying that. But I get the sense that the OP is searching for something more than advice. She’s looking for assurance that Greg can give up and still be on the side of right. And none of us are going to be able to really give that assurance with any amount of credibility, because only Greg knows in his heart of hearts whether he’s truly maxed out his options.
To your first paragraph…yes, programs do exist for those on public assistance. The rub, though, is that even when you qualify for the things like free child care and transportation, in most states, the system is so overloaded with those in need of these services that you’ll languish on a list of “entitled for services; no provider currently available” for years. It’s this double-edged sword. In some states you can’t even qualify for the things like daycare until you’ve secured a job, but you can’t accept a job and then find out you’re on an 18-month waiting list for daycare.
As for your second paragraph…you’re really thinking that she could actually get licensed as a daycare provider? Not likely. And providing daycare without a license is not legal.
I really really wish he could do this. But the reality is that he could never afford this. There’s the airfare (let’s say $500) plus rental car, hotel, and 4 people eating out 2-3 times a day, plus activities ( because they’re not going to be sitting around a hotel room). So let’s call that $1,000 a visit, 12 times a year = $12,000. Greg has about $1,500 a month take home pay to cover all his expenses, (and rent alone in the DC area is minimum $1,000 for a 1- bedroom) so clearly he would never be able to afford it.
So while it’s a great idea it is not financially possible.
Well, I don’t think I was being an asshole and doesn’t change the fact that you said “Frankly I can’t believe people are still seriously suggesting that he move. The cons far outweigh the pros. It just seems like a blame-the-victim mentality that I see often here on the Dope”.
Anywho, I must say that is a surprisingly low salary you’re reporting for Greg. He moved across the country and is in a highly specialized high tech field and he takes home $1500/month? Add the $2500 child support and my calculations show he earns about $50 000/year. I got the impression he was making about 100 grand.
Does he have a 401K? Can he borrow from it? (We can borrow from our 401K and repay it at 4% interest with no tax penalty.) Does he have an IRA? How about liquidating some of that now, taking the tax hit on it, then rebuilding it over the next X years while he uses the cash to be a bigger part of his sons lives now instead of using it on himself in 20, 30, ?? years? What can he cut out of his own lifestyle that he can use towards getting to California to spend time with his sons?
I’m sitting in a hotel right now because we had to vacate our home during some major renovations. It’s a Homestead Studio Suites hotel with a full kitchen. You haven’t said exactly where in Northern California the boys live, but just as an example, in Sacramento, the Homestead Studio Suites on Gateway Oaks Drive is $55/night and the Extended Stay America on Harvard Street, as well as the one on Rosin Court are only $50/night. Groceries are cheaper than eating out, so for a weekend’s worth of meals he might spend $100 on food. With a mileage credit card and a frequent flyer program membership, he could probably get at least 2 flights free per year, maybe more, depending on how much he uses his credit card. Don’t rent a car, take a cab from the airport, then use public transportation to get around while he’s there. I take the bus all the time. It won’t kill him, I promise.
Even if he can only manage to do that 6 or 8 times a year instead of 12, it’s more than he’s doing now. He has to ask himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of his boys. That’s really what it boils down to.
But maybe less often. I’d think it would be hard to get away for a long weekend more often anyway, maybe a weekend with a couple of weekdays four times a year. There are also alternatives that could cut costs.
Airfare can be as low as $200-250 round trip. I don’t see an alternative to a rental car. Are there friends he could stay with? Camping during the summer months, which could also cut down on activities costs and meals costs, as well as provide more quiet time for the kids to spend with him. I still don’t know if he could swing it very often, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.
Shayna’s got more good advice too, and thinks he can do without a rental car to boot.
You’re right, I can’t agonize on this forever, but there will always be a sadness in my heart that these kids are not getting what they deserve, and that they don’t have all the opportunities they deserve to have because they’re living in a home with low standards and expectations.
Just a factual thing: I never talked about wanting Greg’s child support to be reduced like you say in line 2, only for it to be used for the benefit of his kids.
This is a losing battle and what makes it worse is that the one thing we could theoretically do, which is to go out to California to visit as much as possible, is impossible. It is cost-prohibitive. Especially if Greg is ordered to pay Susan’s $15,000 legal bill. If this happens, it will be a long long time before Greg would be able to see the kids. (Of course this is probably Susan’s strategy - stick it to Greg by making him pay her legal bill, which will bankrupt him and have the added bonus of him not being able to afford seeing the kids. This is exactly what Susan wants to achieve.)
If I have made over-the-top characterizations, I apologize. I don’t think Greg is an angel. He made serious mistakes when he was young by getting involved with this woman and having multiple children with her. But as much as people want to insist this, I don’t see his decision to follow his career and move to DC to be a “huge mistake,” because after all, Susan said she was going to move to the East Coast too.
I also don’t think Susan is a “demon.” In fact I have given her some props here. She doesn’t drink, do drugs. She doesn’t abuse them. They are well-fed and given lots of perks such as limitless video game and TV time (which makes them happy but isn’t really helping them). So yeah the kids are outwardly happy. They get to play Xbox, Playstation and Wii all day, every day. What kid wouldn’t be happy?
And I do acknowledge that Susan does probably genuinely love her children, I just don’t think she is doing as much as she can to better their lives, and I think she is full of vengeance and hatred and that is what drives her actions against Greg, and this only hurts the kids in the end.
You should see the missives she writes to Greg. Never have I seen words of such hatred, anger, false accusations, just pure vengeance. Her writings are pages and pages of vitriol. It’s unbelievable what she writes to Greg. It looks like the writings of a raving lunatic. I would love to re-post her stuff here, but obviously that would not be kosher. But believe me when I say this woman has some major anger problems.
My “999/1000” statement was a bit of hyperbole to illustrate my frustration. I’m sorry that it set you off. I can’t know what the outcome is of all the hundreds of thousands of child custody cases out there to figure out if there is a slant towards mothers or not. But I have been doing my research. Oh boy, have I been reading. And I am getting a strong sense that Greg’s case is not unusual, in fact pretty common for judges to rule in favor of mothers in the face of evidence that the father is the better custodian. I have read so many first-person accounts of stories just like these to know that something not quite right is going on out there. It’s not sexy enough to make headlines or even warrant a single article. Because it would take a huge endeavor to research and report the flaws of the system. And with newspapers going out of business, etc., it’s not a story you’re going to be reading in the mainstream news. Most people are ignorant to these issues. Unless you have gone through them, most people don’t know what the laws and processes are. It’s a huge confusing mound of confusion and it costs an ungodly amount of money for a lawyer to explain it all.
Good question. In a perfect world scenario I would like the following:
For Susan not to hate Greg. For Susan to be cooperative and supportive of Greg’s efforts to be a father.
For Me & Greg and Susan & her boyfriend & the six kids to all live nearby. To be friends even. I would even be happy to host the boys’ siblings over for a sleep over or take them all camping.
I would love to be able to sit down and do homework with the boys each night, and go to all their school activities. It is important for them to do well with their education so they can make something of themselves and take advantage of their intelligence.
I want to be there to ferry the kids around to sports practice, activities, social events, something which I know Susan cannot do because she has the other kids. I want the boys to be able to have their friends over to hang out and for sleep overs etc. which I know they cannot do at Susan’s because their house is too small.
I want the boys to get good grades, not get in trouble, not get arrested, not get a girl pregnant, graduate high school, and go to college, and have aspirations for a career, unlike Susan and her boyfriend. And have fun and be happy while doing it.
I would like to see Susan make an effort to better her own life. I would like her to get job training and experience so that she can support her younger kids, then herself after her kids are all grown up. This is also because I don’t want Greg’s boys to have to see their mom suffer and destitute in the future, and feel like they have to take care of her.
There are many other goals I have, but keep in mind this is all in a “perfect world.” In reality I doubt many of these things could really happen
