Let’s strip away the moral issues, including whether he has a relationship with his daughter, or why. It’s none of our business.
You present your thoughts in a way that seems to make this a business issue of sorts. I think that’s appropriate and I have found that once you remove emotion from the discussion, things are more rational.
1)This issue as to what is “comfortable” is relative. What is comfortable for your neighbor and what is comfortable for Paris Hilton are 2 entirely different things.
2) In adddtion to relativity, there is also the issue of relevence. It doesn’t make one bit of difference if either of us thinks $70K is a lot of money or not. In DR courts all over the country the question is: What are the two parties relative incomes? The non-custodial parent will pay child support based on his income, relative to the combined income of both parties.
So I have completely revised my thoughts on this, I really have. it is not place to impute a set of moral values on Mr Johnson that he doesn’t share.
He shouldn’t have to pay one thin red cent of child support the millisecond this girl turns 18. Not a cent.
However, this is business. It’s not personal. The court should go back to every year of her life and recompute the required child support, based on their individual incomes in each of those years , and within the rules & guidelines in force in each of those years, and assess Mr Johnson accordingly.
If Mr. Johnson overpaid, the girls mother should reimburse Mr Johnson post haste. OTOH, if Mr Johnson underpaid, he should immediately pay the difference immediately.
Once the accounting is settled, the mother and young girl should consider that the legal question has been settled fairly, and the young girl (with her mother) should take care of her own college.
I bet the Big Unit wants to give her more but Mrs. Unit probably runs the finances and fears that her children will somehow become paupers if this love child gets any more cash.
This is my biggest beef with the situation. I’m not a mind reader, and I don’t know the woman in question, but I think she wants that money for herself. I think if she can’t afford to send her daughter to some community college on $69K a year, then some(?) of that “child support” money is actually being used on “mom support.” Is that what the intent of that money award is? I don’t think so.
And no, I’m not “young” and I’m not a deadbeat dad (I’m a 42 year old married woman).
This is not necessarily true. My daughter, while smart, is no prodigy. She is taking college courses while in high school and she keeps the credits when she registers for college. Its helps to decide which major to take in the long run, if you take a few courses in high school, and decide that’s not what you want to study, you’re ahead of the game aren’t you?
What I believe the difference between these two arguments is that one is arguing ‘that the amount he’s paying should be enough for the greedy btch’, while the other is saying 'it’s his kid he should do what he can, the stingy bstard’.
I beleive if she really was greedy, the minute he started to rise to popularity, she would have been on his butt like white on rice. Is it fair that his legitimate children get whatever they want paid for, while she has to make do?
(Yes, I understand that $69K a year is a lot more than scraping by, but compare it to how the children from his marriage are being raised, what car they may get, college they will go to… hell, you’d want to be sued for therapy bills too?)
Plus: regarding DNA – you think he willing to go through the trouble, cost, and public embarrassment of court over a few grand and then not have previously gotten a DNA test?
Umm… She can afford that. Tuition at Harvard stands at $44,350 per year with room and board, even assuming $0 financial aid. That leaves more than $25k per year. A new Corvette costs $44,490 at sticker price. She could buy the new Corvette and pay it off within two years (three if the interest rate is really high). With what Randy Johnson is paying alone, she can afford what you suggest.
Besides all that, it’s no one’s God-given right to have all college expenses paid for and a sports car! The mother’s been paid over a half-million already! (Although, if the $69,000 a year I keeping hearing is correct, she’s been paid over a million already. $69,000 times 16 years is $1,104,000.) Anyway, it’s a little offensive to people who had to work hard to get into colleges like that to say that she should be able to go to an Ivy League school simply because her father’s rich and plays baseball.
I fit the same demographic as you, and my gut is to tell the golddigging bitch to jump in a lake.
She lives in Washington, not Ohio. From my understanding, it isn’t unusual for child support to be adjusted if a) the relationship was not intact throughout the pregnancy and b) the non-custodial parent is wealthy. Child support is paid. And paid pretty high - it isn’t like the kid won’t have a roof over his head or enough to eat, but just because you manage to seduce Mr. Buffet in the steak house bathroom in Omaha doesn’t give you a billionaire’s lifestyle for eighteen years. Payouts at the normal formula encourage a few preditory women, and no one wants that (other than the preditory women).
Link 1 states that Johnson has set up a trust account for his daughters college education, so we can put that to bed. It also mentions that the mother is now married and living with husband and son. I only mention the latter to eliminate the idea that this is a single mother and daughter with inherently limited personal resource.
Link 2 claims (from Johnson’s attorney) that he was willing to pay for the car and computer directly, but the mother refused. Take that with as big a grain of salt as you like.
I’d like to add some evidence to my claim that the amount of $70,000 being “enough” is relevant (or should be relevant) to the child support amount. In California, for example, there is a rule specifically limiting child support amounts in the cases of parents with very high income, if that support exceeds the needs of the child Link 3
Granted, every jurisdiction is different, and I could not find a similar rule in Washington, where the girl now lives. I chose California initially because the mother worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs, it’s at least as relevant to this case as Ohio’s law.
That I understand. I will still stand by my assertion that Mr. Johnson is not denying his estranged daughter an education, which it seems that raindog has backed away from.
raindog, now we are in agreement. The child’s mother should seek legal remedy, the two sides’ lawyers should bury each other in paperwork, and both sides should adhere to whatever agreement is decided by the court. If the jurisdiction allows for past child support in such a case, then Mr. Johnson should be liable for it, and a payment schedule should be set (Mr. Johnson might be able to pay immediately, but he shouldn’t be treated differently from any other shmuck).
Reading Cheesesteak’s links, there seems to be a lot of ‘he-said, she-said’. For example:
I feel sorry for the 16 y.o. girl now caught like a deer in the media headlights. But I’m sure that all the sports journalists will be respectful of her feelings.
Anyway, I’m in agreement with everybody who says that it’s up to the courts to decide. The “mere” seventy grand doesn’t necessarily make Johnson a deadbeat asshole, and Mom seeking more doesn’t necessarily make her a gold-digging byatch.
Y’know, I once knew a kid whose dad was a self-made multimillionaire. Despite that, the dad made sure that his kids had a fairly “normal” childhood. 2 of the 3 went to public school, their allowances were relatively small, and they held summer jobs like everyone else. When they bought their first cars, he only paid for half of it, and he also required that they pay for part of college. AFAIK, they had no trust funds awaiting them. Other than the kick-ass vacations, their lifestyle was about like your average doctor or lawyer’s kids.
The partents, in short, supplied them with a childhood that was comfortable but by no means cushy, even though they could have done so. They were pretty much universally held to be wise and virtuous; but I can only assume that black455 and raindog think these parents were evil and heartless.
Wait, she’s remarried? That doesn’t factor into anything here? It sounds like the law requires that the father pay the full cost of the child’s life, while even a mother with means of her own is free to sqabble over what luxury items she additionally demands. We live in a society where lots of child support goes totally unpaid because the government won’t put any effort into enforcing it. But if you’re already rich, then you can hire lawyers and demand luxury items? What a bizarre country.
Whatever happened to that guy who fathered some kids with his wife, she left him for another man, and after paying child support, he found out that all the kids were fathered by this other man, but the court ordered him to pay child support anyway?
However, I do have some pity for these poor kids whose lifestyle was no better than “your average doctor or lawyer.”
It’s one thing to teach your kids the value of a dollar, to teach them self discipline, self determintion, self respect, hard work, and maturity.
That is not the father that Martin Hyde described, and it certainly doesn’t describe the life that this young girl enjoyed as Randy Johnson’s daughter.
In general, I expect that children generally inherit their parents’ lifestyles and generally get treated approximately as their siblings. (please note the words “generally” and “approximately”).
So, yes, I would wonder about a mother who had a great deal of money and treated herself to every luxury, but only purchased the barest necessities for her minor child. (which, btw, it doesn’t sound like the father in your example is doing). Similarly, I would also wonder about a father who gave two of his minor children their every desire and provided observably less for the third. (Cinderella anyone?)
Of course, there are reasons for doing that, and some of those reasons are very, very good reasons - however, some are not. That doesn’t matter until the legal system gets involved in the family; but once it is, that parent needs a good reason. And to me, “I treat Pat & Terry differently because I like Pat’s dad better than Terry’s dad” doesn’t seem like a good reason.
Actually, it may well. $69,000 a year tax-free is about equal to $100,000 pre-tax. Even if the mother didn’t do a lick of work, their family income for the past decade has been in the top 5% of the population … pretty much Doctor and Lawyer territory there.
No, the whole family lived as if Dad made $200K a year, including Dad. It was just well-known that he actually had millions.
Agreed – unless the issue is that the mother in this case bore the child for the specific reason that she wanted to use the child to leech off a millionaire. These sorts of women do plaugue pro athletes, and IF that’s what this is, I can understand a guy saying “I’ll pay enough so that this child will have a fair shot in life, but I’ll be damned if I let you parlay your vagina into a life of luxury.”