Likelihood of deadbeat dad going to jail?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hey all, hope you guys are doing well. I know this is a hot button topic, and I’m probably going to be guff for this.

Unfortunately, I really have no choice.

I’m not talking about MEN in general. I’m a man myself, and I’m just hoping for some answers. Any help would be really appreciated, my wife and I have been dealing with this issue for many, many years.

I’m at the end of my rope. It’s a long winded story, because there’s a lot of details that might be relevant, so they’ll be included. Please bear with me, and I really am sorry.

I moved in with my wife over 7 years ago. She had a daughter and a son. The son was about to turn 18 (so not much room for fathering) and the girl had just turned 5. Unfortunately, my wife’s exes were not in the picture. As a result, both my stepson and stepdaughter really looked at me more than I think would be normal. (Then again, I honestly have never had kids, so I wouldn’t know what normal is).

Because of my stepson’s age, and the fact that my stepdaughter’s father was out of the picture, my wife and I basically focused our parenting time on the girl.

I really don’t have a single nice thing to say about my stepdaughter’s biological father. Clearly, none of you know me from Adam, so anything I would say would have to be taken with a grain of salt. But this dude is seriously evil. My wife and I were police officers and I’ve honestly never seen evil like this man firsthand before. I’m 100% convinced that if he could, he would do really awful things to my wife, and my daughter- but more on that later.

The biological dad (let’s just call him AH, for short) was a guy who worked his entire adult life in bars, getting paid cash. He had freedom to do whatever he wanted, as a result, he always did. AH has always had a string of women, and while dating my wife (before we met of course), he was cheating with this waitress at the bar. This waitress fell for him like Fatal Attraction and got pregnant on purpose. AH demanded that the young waitress abort the baby, she refused. Crying and destroyed, the much younger women went across the country so that her mother could take care of her and her soon to be daughter.

Fast forward a few years, and AH and the former waitress are back together. AH decides to marry her, so the waitress flies back down here and moves in with AH. AH, now having a permanent free babysitter, now wants to see my stepdaughter. My wife and I didn’t have a problem with it.

At first. We started developing problems with it because he started using this child as a weapon against my wife. This guy was doing some seriously awful things (showing up at her school to pull her outta class, to take her away from my wife. He made my stepdaughter write down “my mother is a witch” ten times. Just really bad stuff.)

Eventually, AH stepped up his villain game and decided to hurt us with other things. He would call my in-laws to bitch about us. (yeah, I know). He stopped paying the measly $200 a month he was giving us (her tuition alone was $950 a month). My wife foolishly left open some credit cards that he could use and he racked up over $60k in debt on that. Eventually, it all came bundled with threats and we couldn’t take anymore.

That ended with us taking him to court. We couldn’t prove exactly how much the guy was making because everything was in cash. But the judge did find him to be “wholly not credible” because AH was hiding his finances, yet still had expensive toys and the like. He was slapped on the wrist for not paying, as well as all the other things he did. Ordered to a parenting class, ordered to pay 3.5X what he thought was obscene to begin with (the original $200). Furthermore, the kid was recommended to see a therapist because of this issue…

We did everything as ordered, hoped things would clear up. They did for a very short amount of time. Then AH started again. This time with bribes to my stepdaughter. Eventually that stopped working, and he went on to do other things (threatening my stepdaughter, yes his own biological child. Punishing her, and on and on.)

I’m fully convinced that AH has serious psychological issues (most likely a certified narcissistic personality disorder case). We had to stop taking the girl to the psychologist because AH would literally sit in on the doctor’s sessions and talk over the doctor and my stepdaughter.

The abuse got worse and worse on my stepdaughter and my wife. My wife became disabled while on the force, and we became impoverished, because my wife needed around the clock care. I didn’t think it would last this long, and it killed our savings.

AH hasn’t paid support in almost 3 years, he has amassed over $21.5k in debt for child support. Whenever a judge says “Pay this in 2 weeks or you lose your license”, he pays immediately. AH declared bankruptcy, chapter 7, but claims to be making $50k a year now solo on his tax return. He hasn’t given as much as ten bucks, literally.

Make matters worse, he constantly demands visitation at HIS convenience. My wife and I have to drop the girl off at his home, and he comes into our gated community whenever he feels like it. The threats are getting much darker; but there’s no text, so I can’t prove anything to an officer.

We finally got some money from a miracle, and we have a contempt hearing coming up and a modification hearing to be held after that case is settled.

My wife and I have an old friend of ours from the force (who is a great PI now) and he’s doing a full investigation on the guy. We can somewhat prove he had some money (at least enough that he should have been giving ten bucks a month or something), we can prove that he has been totally unreasonable and aggressive. We have all of that, but I’m worried for my wife and stepdaughter’s sake.

Stepdaughter is 12 now, and she REALLY dislikes AH. She says that he treats her like “a red headed Cinderella”, and that she is constantly getting exploited over there. She even wrote a letter to our attorney now, because she wanted his stuff to be seen for what it was- emotional abuse.

I know this was longwinded and I’m super sorry. As you can imagine, I’m really at my wit’s end. The guy never does anything so crazy that I could do anything to check him. And if he really is NPD, (which I would bet my life on) the guy really believes he is 100% in the right.

I’m in Florida, I know we have a horrible problem here with these parents… What are the chances this guy will actually get what he deserves and goes to jail? He’s terrified of jail, so that will make him realize that he can’t shirk his responsibility.

Anyway, thanks a lot. Sorry for the length.

2

Sorry to say but unless he’s convicted of a jailable offense (a couple times if it’s a less serious one), he’s pretty unlikely to go to prison just for being a douche. I’ve had a similar experience and found that sadly there’s no laws against (or interest in preventing) a person from being a jerk. Even if he does go to jail or get convicted of a criminal offence, that has little to nothing to do with child custody issues (at least around here). The courts can and will force you to work parenting issues out with a partner that assaulted you as long as that person complies with all the conditions of their sentence/parole/whatever. The rights of access to one’s kids are pretty strongly upheld for everyone, even in the face of absurdidty.

3

And I completely get that.

It’s just we had an order made about 3-4 years ago, and he’s been going against the orders this entire time. (The orders established the payment plan which he has ignored entirely. They also set up a visitation schedule, and they also told AH to never speak about my wife and I to the child. He just keeps doing whatever he wants)

Unfortunately, the original documentation isn’t clear about where AH has to pick her up. It IS clear about what days, but if we don’t bend over backwards for this guy, he really ruins my stepdaughter’s life. The stuff this guy does is really out of a novel-type bad.

4

Theoretically, he could be prosecuted for perjury if his under-the-table income can be conclusively established. In practice, it’s probably not going to happen. You might qualify for a modification of the time-sharing arrangement based on a material change in circumstances, though (that is, he’s abusing your stepdaughter and she is apparently willing to discuss it.)

This is not legal advice, I am not your lawyer, give up now, etc.

5

I understand. I just wanted people who might have more insight on this than I.

I know that you can all have every single element to my case, and it won’t mean a thing. I know it’s not legal advice…

I’m just looking to see what others who have been in similar situations have to say. Whether they have experience firsthand or in their career. I’m just really going crazy over here, this guy seems to be able to do whatever he wants.

I’m not used to this kind of insanity. I knew the system was broken, I was in it, after all. I just never knew it was THIS broken that the guy can blatantly do outlandish things with zero consequence.

6

The IRS definitely has a zero tolerance for this kind of thing (falsifying income). It sounds like this guy’s got enough OTHER stuff to put him away for a long time!

Your wife doesn’t sound like a stupid woman. What was she thinking when she got involved with someone like this? :confused::smack:

7

I wonder the same exact thing… It’s enough to make me sick/furious, so honestly, I try not to think about it.

If you ever read up on NPD, these people are REALLY charming. They tend to be, anyway. She’s told me that she didn’t spend that much time consecutively with him (they never lived together) and that he was just a completely different person.

TBH, I never knew this guy before my wife. Because of that, I NEVER understood this guy. Never knew what his motivations where, what he was planning, nada.

It was only until recently that a lot of the stuff he did was being made more and more known to me. That’s when I realized that this guy HAS to be suffering from NPD.

He has literally sent all sorts of crazy text messages to my wife (stuff that’s borderline like “I will make sure you pay” “I’m going to enjoy when everyone realizes how bad you are”, really crazy stuff) So all of these texts are there, from his number.

All this time, I was really scratching my head. He had me stumped. I just couldn’t understand how he was acting invincible, when he was very clearly being a crap parent.

But if you read about NPD, it’s crystal. He doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong. He doesn’t think anyone could POSSIBLY know more than him. That’s why he keeps firing attorneys when he doesn’t win his cases, that’s why he gave the psychologist an earful.

I believe the scientific term is, looney tunes? Heh

8

In theory a person could be held in contempt and sent to jail for being behind on their child support, but in practice the courts are very reluctant to do so because obviously putting someone in jail isn’t very conducive to their being able to start making payments again. But if you could prove egregious asset-hiding though, who knows.

You should definitely at least talk to a family law attorney about the whole situation. One other thing is that I know in some states at least, once a child is a certain age (in my state it’s 13) they can have a certain amount of say in custody issues. It might be worth trying to change things at that point.

9

He may get threatened with jail many times but it rarely ends up happening. Unless there’s proof that he has been hiding substantial income nothing will come of that either.

Is there a court order about visitation?

10

My wife and I had a similar situation with her ex, minus the unreported income part, and the only thing that worked was dragging him into court, over and over. It cost us money, but that meant he had to hire a lawyer to defend himself, which the lawyer couldn’t really do since he was clearly in the wrong. After 3 separate court appearances he finally realized it wasn’t worth the time, money or hassle to fight us, and gave up. He would shout over his attorney and then yell at him when the outcome was against him. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. We didn’t need to get him locked up for being an asshole.

11

Yep, there is a visitation order, a child support order… everything. This is the third time we have had to take him to court.

But that’s exactly my fear. If everything keeps bouncing off of this guy like he’s the teflon don, then his delusions are just being reinforced. He’s going to continue to think that he’s super dad and that everything he does is justified, all while making my stepkid’s life miserable.

I read up on this as much as I can. Our attorney says that he has gotten deadbeats jailed before, but won’t elaborate as to what he thinks will happen. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to say one way or the other, and I can understand that he may feel uncomfortable with setting up hopes for us.

I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, truly. I always knew it was a broken system, but I thought that with this much to back up our case, it would be a slam dunk. But yeah, it seems as if most deadbeats walk away scott-free.

In this example, letting this guy go with another slap on the wrist just okays him to continue the onslaught. He recently called up my in-laws again, spent an hour scoffing and ridiculing us to my wife’s own father. Kept bragging about how much money we’re wasting, and that he’ll never go to jail.

He always focuses on the perceived negatives of other people. He won’t tell anyone “they’re taking me to court because I have never paid child support since the last hearing”.

And I wish we could get the in-laws to testify, but it won’t happen. The mother-in-law is really a step-mother-in-law and her son has become friendly with AH. Again though, it really seems as if we have so much that this sort of desperation shouldn’t be needed.

12

What ended up happening in your case? Did that guy ever pay at all?

In many ways, this guy is exactly that type. He goes through several lawyers because he believes he is beyond reproach, infallible. When he loses, he gets really angry and fires them.

I have little doubt (but considering how crap the system is, it is possible) that we will win in the sense of proving this guy violates court orders. I just doubt that he will be jailed, which is what he really needs. Then, for the modification hearing, I’m sure we can prove again that he’s up to his old tricks again. He seriously does this nonstop. He doesn’t even bother changing it up, he just flat out refuses to pay.

If he won’t be incarcerated, then at least, in modification I would hope he gets a lot less. He’s a monster.

13

In MA judges do have a fondness for throwing such characters in jail over the weekend, but there is never really any long term imprisonment. The best outcomes end up being the deadbeat dad gets annoyed enough at the cops showing up with warrants Friday night and just leave the state. The states more than willing to garnish wages but as in this case if you don’t have a cooperative employer to work with the chances of seeing the money are rather slim.

14

I’ve heard the other side of this. Let’s suppose you get a girl pregnant and now you owe child support. You get laid off/fired from your job. You have marketable skills, but every resume you send gets shit-canned - it happens. Even if you technically have in demand skills, it does not mean anything if every position you apply for, the employer actually plans to hire an H1B and is looking for a reason to reject you.

Anyways, you can’t physically pay the child support. Money isn’t in your account, you’re on foodstamps, every penny you do manage to get has to go towards food/rent/utilities. You live in a cheap place and eat cheap food.

Well, I’ve heard that judges will declare that since you appear able bodied, even if no one will give you a job, you must be a shirker and the judge will jail you. Is this really true?

15

I’ve heard that very often as well.

The problem is, that in this state it appears to be more commonplace. Since most of the parents are deadbeats, the judges don’t go around sending most to jail.

To me, this guy needs to go to jail. Reason behind that is that he hasn’t taken a thing seriously. Even now he believes that it’s a farce that he’s going to court. When he was complaining to my in-laws, he wasn’t upset about the fact that he owes a ton of money. He’s upset that he has to bother to get an attorney and be inconvenienced by the trial.

He completely believes he’s doing nothing wrong, and unless he pays a VERY real penalty, he will keep doing whatever he’s done these last recent years. If something changes, regardless of how narcissistic he is, he will have to change his behavior pattern because he is THAT afraid of jail.

He doesn’t believe he’s wrong. He feels no shame for not giving his biological kid anything. He pays absolutely nothing. To top it off, he TAKES away money that my wife and I give the girl. I can go on and on and I’m sure at this point, it looks like I’m the one he was in a relationship with because I’m sure I’m coming across as bitter.

I just see nothing slowing him down. My kid and wife are suffering because of it and he couldn’t care less. I can’t articulate how infuriating it is. I can’t protect my family, I can’t stop the bleeding he’s causing. I have to have faith in a system I know to be flawed, that up till now, has been perfectly content with letting AH do nothing.

And yeah, I get that “fathers have rights”. But this dude only picks our daughter up to taunt us and hold her over our head. We even have text messages from him saying “the visitation is for the sister-sister relationship”. This guy doesn’t have a clue that he’s supposed to be there, not pawning off his daughter on his wife. He has no idea of what parenting is, and because of these loose laws, a delusional man like him just believes himself to be all the more right.

He gets proven untouchable over and over again, all while we wait on the system to do the right thing.

Do I know this is an extreme case? Of course. But does this absurd oversight constitute a major flaw? Come on…

16

There are certainly unreasonable judges that aren’t interested in hearing excuses however valid they may be.

Jail comes into play when they ignore court orders or fail to appear. Many of the guys who find themselves victims of ‘unreasonable’ judges fail to do anything proactive or document their situation.

If you are required to pay child support as soon as your income changes you should be filing to have the support payments adjusted to reflect your income. Skipping a payment then trying to explain after the fact isn’t going to help you in any way.
If you are unemployed document your work search and be able to show it.

The guys that have legitimate issues with paying and get themselves in trouble are typically disorganized and fail to demonstrate their case to the court. In some ways it’s unfair, on the other hand if you’re not working you should have the time to be able to present an organized argument.

17

Strange thread, this is.

I’m seeing two lines of complaint: That he doesn’t pay support, and that he is persistently abusive toward the child and family.

Yet this thread seems focused primarily on just one of those problems (that he doesn’t pay), with only some tangential mentions of the abuse problem.

The abuse problem seems more serious. Sounds like what OP needs the most (but hasn’t really mentioned) is getting a court order prohibiting the guy from any further contact with or about the family. And if he really must be allowed contact with the child, it should be supervised contact only.

And he attends some sort of therapy sessions with the child ? :confused: :smack: Now that’s weird. I never heard of that before. And he hijacks every such session with abusive bullying? And the therapist allows that to happen?

Do you have a choice of therapist, or has the court ordered you to have these sessions with this particular therapist? Sounds like you really really need to find a different therapist.

Or a different judge.

Good luck with that.

18

I can’t prove much abuse. The abuse is financial and emotional. My attorney has a really good relationship with the judges here, and he believes that regardless of context, it’s never a good idea for a child to testify.

I have hundreds, if not thousands of text messages that show him to be unreasonable and aggressive. I have a letter from the stepdaughter outlining everything he does, attorney said it could be interpreted as a manipulation tactic on our end.

Thus, he said to focus on what we can easily prove, without subjectivity. If the kid was getting bruised up, I could easily detain her. But AH’s abuse is impossible to see without speaking to the child and believing her.

The doctor was unfortunately agreed to in court. The matter came up and names were suggested. My wife and AH had to agree on a doctor before the case ran. They took stepdaughter to doctor, and the doctor himself told my wife that he had to see my stepdaughter alone because AH makes therapy impossible. We explained to doctor that there was a court order naming him, because he came highly praised and he was the name mutually agreed upon. Only recourse was setting up another date.

We were broke by then.

I know it’s convoluted, but that’s just because this is the situation that AH has created. Besides, if you had read about NPD, you would know that NPD parents find no value in children after they stop feeding their “ego supply”.

Like I said, I’m a male myself, so let’s stow the conspiracy theories away please? I’m just some guy who is trying help his family the best in a horrible situation.

Speaking of which… doesn’t it look bad that AH is paying for a defense attorney, despite declaring bankruptcy and not paying in years? The more I think about this… the worse it gets. AH is just going to continue to hurt my wife and kid because he needs to be in that position of power and control… When I came on here, I expected skepticism because I know this sounds like something out of a daytime soap. Trust me, I see it. But like I said earlier, this is just a guy at the end of his rope trying to do right.

19

Have you reported him to CPS for emotional abuse?

20

This has been going on for about 5 1/2 years. Yes, we have done everything possible, including guardian ad litems. The judicial system REALLY doesn’t want to separate a child from their father, even in cases where the father is a clear scumbag (even rapists have parental rights).

We’ve had two guardian ad litems, and the first one felt that my kid was being “dramatic and acting out”.

The impression these professionals give is that emotional abuse is often reported when it’s not happening. People that really have this happening to them suffer as a result of an overworked, skeptical and desensitized system.

When the court ordered therapy, I thought it would not only be cathartic to my daughter, but I also hoped that the doctor would take this opportunity to coach AH on what not to say. Problem is, AH frustrated the doctor to hell and back. Doctor got to the point where he saw no point in continuing treatment if we didn’t have an order specifically barring AH from stepping in (Dr could not restrict a parent from listening in on a minor’s therapy session unless included in court order).

Again, I realize that this issue has a lot of dimensions. It’s complicated because this guy is unbelievably bad, and I get that it’s hard to believe people like this exist.

I’m just reporting the facts as I have them. I have exhausted all of my finances trying to protect my wife and daughter, the system seems to fail perpetually. I had hoped that this contempt hearing would FINALLY get him to realize that his actions have real life consequences. But after reading plenty on this in the last month or so, it seems clear that it’s VERY hard to jail a guy, no matter how much evil he does.

I was just trying to get a word from people who may have heard of similar situations. I’m trying to establish the probability that this will finally be over. If there’s a good chance he’ll end up in jail, there’s a real good chance he will be scared straight; AH is mortally terrified of jail. If the chance of him being jailed is slim to none, then I need to go back to the drawing board and come up with even more creative solutions.

If there even are any more options at this point. I’ve been at this for years and have tried every single thing I could, many times over. At least, I’ve tried everything that I KNOW about. Maybe there are avenues that I didn’t even know where a possibility for me.

As far as reporting him to DCF, the police, the DOR, tried talking to him, tried the court orders/modifications etc… all of this stuff I’ve done several times.

Only thing mentioned here that I haven’t done yet is reporting him to the IRS, but I have seriously considered it. I think that if he gets away with it again, I’m gonna have to try to play that card. My family is being taken advantage of, and it’s been killing me for all of these years. For any of you being critical/skeptical of my intentions, I just have to ask you: Do you have people counting on you? How would you feel if you felt completely powerless against a threat that you SHOULD be able to shield them from?

It’s probably up there for “Worst Feeling in the World”