The girl is 16 years old
2 more years of CS when she is emancipated…$140,000
2 Years of community college, w/ books, fees etc… $10,000
2 Years at good state school to finish BS degree…$45,000
A good Chevy, Saturn etc, out the door… …$18,000
Total cost left…$213,000
Randy’s earning over the next 4 years…$40,000,000(?)
Percentage of Randy’s earnings…0.53%
Price of this girl’s future & dignity?..priceless
Get a soul Randy. Write the check.
Enright3, with all due respect, the logic in my post is perfectly sensible. The amount a parent makes is absolutely relevant in deciding support payments. I don’t have a cite, but I have read it is not at all uncommon for a judge to increase child support when the father’s earnings increase. It would be no different if an out of work father had a very low support payment, then got a good job, of course the mother could go to court and ask for an increase given the change in circumstances. And even if there were not a legal precedent, what about from a moral standpoint? Why should the child of a multi millionaire go to community college? Why should not she not be able to go to Yale? Why should she have to drive a used Saturn when her da-da drives God knows what kind of luxury car(s)?
And if 69K a year is soooo much money according to Mr. Johnson, why didn’t he ask the Yankees for 69K per year? Oh ok it’s only a lot of money when it applies to someone else.
Directly to the college.
Maybe she doesn’t have the grades.
My boss drives a top-class Mercedes with all the trimmings, but he never bought his daughter a car.
Perhaps a lawyer could explain it, but it seems to me that Johnson is saying that the car and college expenses are not part of the “day care” that he’s been required to pay, and that’s why he’s suing about it. Whether he should pay for those things, I have no idea.
Since he’s being such a prick, wouldn’t it be fun to see the girl make do with her mother’s income, and give every fucking dime of child support to a charity or something? He’d still have to pay, and she could sit back and laugh. It would warm my heart.
– signed, Never Received a Dime of Child Support
Randy Johnson has been very lucky. Courts routinely ask rich celebrities to pay much larger amounts in child suport. For example:
Puff Daddy : 35k/month plus travel, medical, and dental bills. And a $1.1 million house
In Wisconsin , child support payments for one child total 17% of ones gross income.
This New York chuld support calculator estimates that given his $15.4 million salary, he should pay (at a bare mininum) 116k/month. Given that it’s a near certainty that he has been made aware of the fact that he is paying far less than most in his position, I think he is a dick for not just writing a check, and sparing everyone the time and embarrassment.
Agreed.
She, well her mom, has been getting $70k/yr tax free for 8 years, I think that’s more than enough to give a person a “decent chance”. Just a tiny bit of forethought, saving, and investment would have given this girl more than enough money to go to any college she wants and drive a brand new car.
As much as Randy makes way more than the average person, these two have been pulling in a handsome after tax sum every year, more than the average family has when working two jobs. Yet they claim they cannot afford a car and community college? That is unmitigated bullshit. If Randy weren’t making big bucks, I think they would have somehow managed to struggle through with the meager 70 grand, tax free, they get every year.
Are they claiming they can’t afford it? Or rather than he should pay it as part of his responsibilities as a father? I also wonder if the college issue was addressed when they did the support agreement.
I think he got off easy and should have been paying a lot more. Support payments are supposed to be tied to the non-custodial parent’s income. The fact that $70,000/year is a lot of money to most people doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they could live a fine life on $70,000/year either.
Seems odd that he has visitation rights and has only seen her once. Wonder what the story is behind that.
Through business ventures my dad was making around $800,000-$900,000 a year back when it was time for me to go to college (this was decades ago when that was much more money than it is now.) He made it quite clear he wasn’t going to pay for it. It didn’t end up being a big deal because I went to a service academy so there were only small expenses, no tuition, and a small stipend to help out.
Did my dad have a moral obligation to pay? I don’t know. I certainly know he had no legal obligation, and there was no legal way for me to compel him to pay for college, be it a $500 a year school or a $15,000 a year school.
Why should a child have more rights than I did because her parents aren’t married? Why should a father who has “raised” a child/married and remained married to the mother not have a legal responsibility to fund a college education but a father who has been an “absentee” parent have that legal responsibility?
I think in general it is good for parents to help out with college. But why should ONE adult, being the parent in our society have the legal responsibility to fund the life of ANOTHER adult, being the child? I can understand an ADULT having the responsibility to provide support for a MINOR, because we accept that minors need help being raised and etc. But I don’t see why a legal relationship should exist between two people who are legally adults in which one person is required to fund the life of the other.
Now, I understand the concept of alimony payments, but I think that is obviously a different situation. Most courts don’t allow you to sue your parents for some form of stipend once you move out because, in the parent-child relationship that came before you had X amount of creature comforts and standard of living and you expect to have that maintained when you move out on your own. The parent-child relationship is understood to be fundamentally different than a marriage arrangement, because there are legal obligations that changed based on how many years in to the parent-child relationship you have gone.
Sure, it’d be a nice thing to do. I just don’t know why he should have the legal responsibility to pay for her college education when parents who are married DO NOT have the legal obligation to give their kids a dime for college.
I am torn, becasue RJ does make a buttload of money and can easily afford it. Plus it is his flesh and blood. I do not believe she deserves any more money for a car, any more than she would need more money for a new pair of shoes. I camn see his point, “I am paying for this stuff already, you do not need extra money.” He isn’t some magical ATM she should be able to come to whenever she finds that the money somehow isn’t enough.
Baseball is a fickle sport. Back when he conceived the love child he wasn’t making as much as he makes now. And in baseball it isn’t even remotely uncommon for a pitcher, even a good one, to blow out his arm and then that’s it, no more income from major league baseball. From that point on it’d be up to Randy to find ways to make his previous earnings last and to try and generate some income based on his celebrity. Which, wouldn’t be too hard now but may have been more difficult back in 1990 or so when his standing as a celebrity was much lower.
So if he has given her a guaranteed amount of money until she reaches adulthood, that isn’t too shabby in my opinion, because due to the nature of his employment he could have been paying that out of a ZERO dollar per year salary instead of a multi-million dollar salary.
There’s tons of reasons. Maybe they don’t like each other. Maybe the daughter wants nothing to do with him. Maybe Randy’s wife puts heavy pressure on him not to visit her. Maybe the girl’s mother has polluted her opinion of Randy and she wants nothing to do with him.
There’s lots of reasons, some of them make Randy a jerk, some make Randy’s wife a jerk, some make the girl’s mother a jerk. Either way, we don’t know but that doesn’t stop the SDMB from labelling Randy Johnson because, hey, the SDMB hates people who make money.
What I don’t like about the situation is a child is given more rights based on the fact her father and mother aren’t married. Within a married relationship the parents could give the daughter NO form of discretionary money at all. They’re required to feed, clothe, and make sure she goes to school. Aside from that their legal and financial responsibilities are very limited.
If Bill Gates wanted to spend a maximum of, say, $25,000 a year on his children he legally could do that if he could manage it and still provide them food, shelter, and make sure they go to school. And there wouldn’t be a legal recourse available to the children because their parents are married.
According to Wikipedia, he made $150,000 for the 1990 season. In 1997, he made $6.325 million - although with the way contracts are structured in baseball, I don’t know if anybody can say how much of that money he actually received that year. Assuming that the $127 million career earnings figure is correct, it’s worth noting that more than $100 million of that came after 1997.
I was trying so-very-hard to stay out of this thread, but this pulled me in.
Martin, you nailed it right here. And it is not just the SDMB. There is a large swath of the lower-to-middle class America, that will view anything those with money choose to do as wrong.
Why shouldn’t she? Nobody has a God-given right to have their parents buy them a car, especially at age 16. Food, clothing, and shelter? Yes. Education? Sure. But a car? No way. That’s a privilege. I was able to buy my first car without the benefit of $60k a year, so I’m sure Randy Johnson’s daughter can do just fine.
(My take on the situation: Randy Johnson’s probably just an ass, and so is his ex-girlfriend. I don’t know enough about the circumstances to have an actual informed opinion.)
I suggest that he IS paying for it as part of his responsibilities. I re-read the story, here’s a quote from it"Laurel said Johnson balked last year after she asked the 3-time Cy Young Award winner to buy a truck and computer for Heather and pay for her community college classes, the Daily News said." The girl is 16, she is not going to college, she’s taking classes at the college. I submit that $70,000 after tax is more than enough to pay for a truck, a computer, and some classes.
I think the $70,000 being a lot of money does matter, and matters enormously. As has been said here, the point of all this is to provide for the child, and not stick the custodial parent with all the costs. $70,000 is more than enough to provide for a child all the things a child needs, it’s enough that the custodial parent need not even work at all and can spend all her time raising the child. If this isn’t enough, at what point does a man pay enough to support his child?
Or… is the point to suck as much money from the rich guy as possible so mommy and baby can live in high style?