This does not at all address what the thread is about which is non-custodial parents that do not pay their fucking support.
I guess I would be walking around with a dead card.
Do thrift stores take credit cards. This is where I bought 75% of my kid clothes when they were little.
Even if I went to Walmart I don’t remember my reciept saying “BOYS SHIRT”. It just said shirt or t-shirt. Are you expecting all retailers to change their coding to male/female items.
So I can not use it at the grocery store since they sell cigarettes?
I also can not take out cash if there is an emergency? Or of my child needs something that just can not be purchased with a card?
What if I get support on Thursday and I do not get paid until Friday but we are out of milk and the only store open is one that sells cigs. Do the kids go without milk that evening?
I think that is bullshit. In fact my ex never cared enough to ask what I spent the whopping $256 I got a month from him. They just took it our of his check, when he was working, and he felt his job was done.
It is obvious you are bitter and maybe you have a reason to be but do you really think this was the thread to post your fustrations in since the thread was about just the opposite of what you are bitching about.
Many states do have the ability to allow obligors to pay in via credit card or automatic recurring withdrawl. Many also do payouts to obligees in the form of debit cards (we also have direct deposit into bank accounts). No state that I know of has any means to allow one party to check what the other spends the child support on, and I can easily say it will be a cold day in hell before a nightmare like that would be enacted.
No, I really don’t believe that to be so. As I noted earlier, my caseload is entirely non-paying. Obligor doesn’t pay in 3 months (or more)? I get the case. I do see cases where lack of visitation = non-payment. I do see the “S/He makes more than I do, so why do I have to pay” cases. I have heard clients complain about how the money is spent, and if it’s THAT important to force the other parent to kowtow to what you believe is the “correct” way to spend child support the venue to work through is the courts. Not the child support agency.
Different kettles of federal fish. The ReliaCard (our EBT type card) is basically a non-account VISA card, handled between the State and USBank (I DO believe Otto gets our client calls - sorry, dude!). Because there is no actual account linked to the card, there is not a way that I know of to track purchases.
I’m sorry that your ex is not providing for your children in a manner in which you expect. It’s NOT the child support agency’s duty to be a nanny. Even beyond that, WHO is supposed to arbitrate what you may feel is wasted spending?
In my own obligee life I recently had a situation where you might blast me for not spending child support “appropriately” - I try to put the child support I receive for TheKid aside, but more often than not it is used for household groceries/necessities. For the past two years my ex has decided to not pay much of anything. He’ll work a few part time jobs, and we’ll see maybe 1/2 the ordered amount- which isn’t a heck of a lot in the first place. I’ve been putting some of my earnings aside for myself also, in hopes to do some things for ME. Suffice it to say “MY” savings dwindled to nothing when he decided to stop paying. Now that he is paying again (still not near what is ordered) I have started funneling some of his support payments into my saving account. Do I feel bad about it? No. I don’t call him to ask for money outside of what has been ordered because I know it will NOT happen. And that’s fine - I would be friggin over the moon were he to simply pay what he’s behind.
Wow. Reading that I saw “Profit Center” for credit companies.
Works as Debit card for recipient, with limits on where and how it can be used, as per your description.
Works as Credit Card billing (with automatic deduction of support payment amount) for payee. Don’t pay? The balance keeps building, your interest keeps adding up, and your credit rating gets wacked. No choice about not paying the recipient, as it is going to be automatically deducted/added to your balance every month.
Bonus: The payee gets a statement each month listing the individual charges made on the debit card, just like any other credit card statement. The new Child Support Visa/Mastercard, only from CapitalOne!
I’m sorry, diggleblop, but that’s just ridiculous.
Do you think that the average custodial parent isn’t using some of that money to pay the rent or the electricity bill? Both of those are part of supporting a child properly. What about school trips where they only take cash or check? What if they’re using food stamps to pay for the milk and cereal that week, and then they can spend that $100 on the credit card bill that had a pair of work pants, four movie tickets, an oil change, and a bottle of shampoo charged to it? You can’t divvy up what is and isn’t going to a child’s support that easily. All of the above is part of maintaining the child’s quality of life and safety.
[QUOTE=diggleblop]
I still say that there needs to be a credit card type system for child support. The custodial parent gets the card, the non custodial parent pays into this card and can access the card information online, just like a bank account to see where the money is going.
/QUOTE]
What level of support are you talking about? I know there are celebrity cases where parents claim they really need $15,000 a month for Junior’s art classes – is the average non-custodial parent really worried where their $200 is going and simply not paying based on this concern?
I actually sort of like your idea (or anything really that makes the non-custodial parent feel like more than an ATM) but as other posters pointed out, not everything is payable by credit.
MissTake, I don’t know you, so I couldn’t say what kind of caseworker you are. You sound dedicated to your job. Suffice it to say, there are many breeds of CSEA caseworker and, yes, some of them are rude, condescending, uncaring, officious, and unhelpful. Some agencies have had poor accounting practices that has created clusterfucks for both obligees and obligors. They are getting better, though, I grant.
You can be pissed all you want, but suffice it to say, not everyone is thrilled at all times with the service. CSEA is a collection agency for the state. Nothing more. Until people start realizing this, expectations are sometimes going to surpass results.
Incidentally, the term “deadbeat” is thrown around far too often as a general epithet by outside observers than it is by people in the system. I simply borrowed the term that was first brought into this thread by another poster. And it was used not in reference to the dad that is the subject of this thread, but “deadbeat dads” in general. It’s an ugly term that is used to paint a broad red letter on all dads (no moms mentioned here) with no consideration of the reasons behind failure to pay. There are many, many reasons, not all are because dad doesn’t care about his kids.
The plan sounds ok on the surface, but it’s impractical. There are discretionary items that can be purchased legitimately that a non-custodial parent might not be crazy about. Going to the movies with the kids every weekend. Taking them to Great America. Or the beach. Or buying tons of junk food for the kids. Or designer clothing. Or pierced ears. Or a tattoo. I don’t think the list of purchases would do anything but make a bitter non-custodial parent crazy.
Having the non-custodial parent be able to see exactly where the money’s going would be a nightmare for parents who have controlling, nasty, or abusive exes. I can just picture mine pick, pick, picking his way through every charge and grilling me over each item.
My ex pays a lot, $800 a month when he actually pays. It all goes into the pot and I don’t pay attention to make sure that whole amount goes directly to my daughter. I live frugally though and don’t buy hookers and blow or anything, and she doesn’t want for anything she should have. When he doesn’t pay I do like Miss Take and do serious belt tightening along with supplementing from my own savings. When he does pay I often also use some to pay back my savings. Perhaps the card thing would be good for those proven to squander their child support, but it would be crummy for the most of us that don’t.
In your calculations of what goes to your son, do you also include a market value on the child care provided to him by the parent with physical custody? I pay a (voluntarily) high level of child support, and if some of that goes on a babysitter, for example, so my ex-wife can go on a date, I can live with that.
I do have a very odd situation re child support that is somewhat frustrating to me… My ex has a child with another man, who is not, I believe, paying child support. I of course have no legal standing to force him to pay support, and she is not going after him for it, because he has no money essentially. But obviously it is a situation that affects my son’t financial situation. Fortunately, I trust my ex wife and know she would never do anything that would result in my son going short on anything. But in the abstract, the situation puts me in an interesting dilemma.
ETA - the first paragraph here is a mess. I am having issues expressing myself…
Yes five. The most time he has ever spent in jail is 30 days with an ankle monitor for three months after release. I am sure he had a probation period as well but I don’t remember what they were or the length.
I can only assume he has a good lawyer.
How he still has a legal license surprises the hell out of me but this is a topic for another thread.
I understood it with no problem.
It was a sort of question I was going to ask diggleblop in theory.
If he* wants a compete listing of every cent of the child support sent then does he also want a complete list of the custodial parents monies spent on the child? Or is he only intersted in what “his” money is used for.
Can the custodial parent also list their time and get a fair price for that time. If a going rate for a sitter is lets say $10 an hour can she clock that time and ad it to the monies spent on the child.
Sounds stupid that a mother or father should clock their time for taking care of their own children but hey if we want to discuss what it really takes to raise a child then time is a much larger investment than the dollar.
We don’t know diggleblop’s situation and for all we know he spends 50% of the time with the child and if so maybe the amount of time and the amount of support do not seem equal. I am always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt but unless he returns and wants to discuss it we can only speculate.
I know in my case their father only saw them four days a month. He was offered more and I told him he could see them anytime he wanted but he chose to only see them when it was ordered. So if I figure that up he saw the kids 48 days a year. He also used to take them one week in the summer when they were younger so if I give him that too then we can bring it up to 53 days. That is less than two months out of the entire year.
The rest of the time they were with me sans some sleepovers at friends or visiting their grandmother.
If my ex had put more effort into seeing and spending time with his children I don’t think I would have been as upset when he had lapses in support. The park is free and the playgrounds are free. If he would have taken them for some unscheduled time with only some PB&J sandwiches and a juice box I would have been much happier than him sending in a $20 since that was all he could scrap together at the time.
*I used he as I think diggleblop is male but if I am mistaken the my sincere apologies
I knew my ex had no money and he flat out told me he didn’t support children that didn’t live with him :eek: and hadn’t sent a dime to his existing children :eek: I thought “quality time” (cue the flowery music) was more important and chose to give him unlimited visitation with no child support demands (not even a court date!). We got the quarterly phone call and an annual visit. Oh…and a letter from jail. Put that one in the baby book.
To be honest I think the only reason my ex even saw his children as often as he did was because he took the visitation in the custody papers as an order rather than his share of the time. I truely think he thought he had to take them every other weekend because that is what the papers said.
Until the papers were actually issued he really made no effort to see his kids or spend time with them.
