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Replies to 'Divorce Support'
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February 4, 2007, 9:33 am PST
 Quote From: ncdad54 If you're like most men, you're married or you hope to marry some day. You think you deserve to live happily ever after but, if things don't work out that way, you'll get a civilized divorce and move on. You'll stay pals with your ex-wife and you'll see your kids as often as you want.
You have no idea what you're getting into.
The odds are 40 to 50 percent that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are 70 percent that your divorce will be filed by your wife. The odds are 80 percent that your wife will get custody of your children - plus child support, alimony and/or a hefty chunk of your property.
From the moment your wife files for divorce, the state, acting through the court, will assert authority over everything you own. The court then can give a major share to your wife by applying the law of "equitable distribution."
The law of equitable distribution is based on the "partnership theory of marriage." This theory holds that your marriage is a business partnership. Everything you earned during marriage you earned for the partnership. Therefore, upon divorce, all your accumulated assets must be split "equitably" between you and your "partner."
The theory also holds that if the property your ex is awarded at divorce doesn't yield enough to support her at the standard of living you established during the marriage, then you should "equitably" pay her the difference in alimony until she becomes self-supporting - in most states, even if the breakdown of the marriage was her fault.
The partnership theory of marriage doesn't quite cover everything you made during marriage: It doesn't cover your children.
Even though you and your ex were partners in the creation of your children, and even though you each contributed "equitably" to their upbringing, these considerations will carry little weight in court. Yielding to precedent and preconception, the court commonly will decide that it is in the "best interest" of your children to be in the sole custody of their mother.
As sole custodian, your ex will acquire primary parental authority to live with your children and to determine their general development, including their health care, education and religious training.
You may "visit" with them on scheduled weekends.
After the court awards your ex the sole custody of your children, it will award you something very special also: the obligation to pay child support.
Your child-support obligation will not be determined by your children's basic needs. The court first will calculate your income, which it then will proceed to tax at a predetermined "guideline" rate set by law. The guideline rate will vary according to the number of your children. It also may vary according to your income level and that of your ex.
At your child-support hearing, you'll be permitted to introduce evidence that the guideline rate is too high - that it will generate more money than is needed by your children or that it will leave you with too little to live on. But the law strongly presumes that the guideline rate produces the correct minimum amount of child support. The burden of proof will be on you to overcome this presumption. The court won't reduce your guideline rate, except in extreme circumstances.
a. If you are a wage-earner, the child support you owe will be withheld from your wages and paid directly to your ex without your ever having to write her a check.
b. Once in the clutches of the child-support system, you'll be systematically shorn of your economic autonomy.
c. If you lose your job, you must continue to pay the court-ordered amount. To get relief, you must file a petition with the court. You also may have to hire a lawyer to argue the petition -which, if unemployed, you would be hard-pressed to do.
d. In court, you won't get complete relief. Initially, the court will expect you to pay a large part of the ordered amount out of savings. It will expect you to reduce your own standard of living before it reduces your child-support obligation. You'll also have to pay - in full - any amounts you failed to pay from the day you lost your job until the day you filed your petition.
e. If you find a new job which pays less than your old one, the court needn't reduce your child-support obligation correspondingly. The court may suspect that you took the lower-paying job to reduce your child-support payments. The burden will be on you to prove you didn't.
f. If you leave your job to start your own business, and you pay yourself a minimal salary until the business prospers, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you about "putting your children first."
g. If you remarry and have children with your new wife, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you again, this time about not bringing more children into the world when you already have children enough to support. And if your new wife works, the court may look at her income as an indirect source of more child support.
h. In the meantime, your ex may claim that your children's needs have increased significantly, and she'll seek to increase your payments. You will have to prove that you can't afford the increase, and it won't be enough to show that your income hasn't increased significantly. If it has, your ex needn't show that the children's needs have increased correspondingly.
i. If your wages are not withheld and you fail to pay your child support, the state will garnish your pay, slap liens on your property, intercept your tax refunds, report you to credit agencies, suspend your driver's, professional and business licenses, hold you in contempt of court, put your face on a wanted poster, throw you in jail and deny you food stamps. But if your ex doesn't spend that very same support on the children, the state will do . nothing.
j. Your child-support obligation doesn't necessarily end when your children grow up, leave home and become legal adults. In many states, you may be ordered to contribute to their college tuition, room and board and their travel expenses, even though married parents can't be ordered to pay for these things.
You also may owe your ex one further payment: part or all of her "reasonable" attorney's fees.
The court will try to eliminate any financial advantage you have in selecting a lawyer. It will not make her fritter away her equitable share of your property on something so inequitable as her attorney's fees. It will make you fritter away your share. Equitable distribution, alimony and child-support law produce a net transfer of assets from you to your ex. Child-custody law produces a net transfer of custody from you to your ex.
From an economic point of view, divorce is a wealth-redistribution racket that forces fathers to make payments to mothers. From a social point of view, it is a family resocialization scheme that turns mothers into state-sponsored single parents and fathers into infrequent visitors of their estranged children.
When the economic and the social aspects of divorce law are netted, fathers are two-time losers. They must pay for the maintenance of women to whom they no longer are married and for the support of children to whom they no longer are full-time parents - all the while having to carry the costs of their own new households.
This skewed regime spawns strong reactionary forces. The strife which the divorce should have ended indeed has only just begun. Your ex will warm to calling all the shots. She may cancel your visitation now and then. If she's truly mean-spirited, she'll go much further. Under the cover of her court-appointed role as sole custodian, she'll systematically sever your relationship with the children: she'll badmouth you to them; she'll schedule their extracurricular activities during your visitation time; she even may accuse you of domestic violence and child abuse.
The authorities will act quickly to "protect" your children from you: They'll curtail your visitation during their investigation, you'll be restricted to being with your children only in the presence of a supervisor, and you'll be ordered to pay the supervisor's fees.
In the end, your children themselves will refuse to spend any time with you. Their brainwashing will be complete and irreversible. They will be alienated from you - forever.
More efficiently, your ex may simply move with the children to a distant community, with the law's acquiescence.
As the struggle wears on, your frustrations will deepen. You'll pass up overtime work rather than earn extra income for your ex. You'll be tempted to "do a fade": to flee the jurisdiction and disappear.
Your health will deteriorate. Your sleep will be disturbed. You'll feel fatigued and distracted. You'll sweat a lot. You'll develop elusive internal pain. The tests will rule out a tumor. The pills will help a little, but the pain won't go away.
While the law pits your ex against you, its ultimate victims will be your children. Your sons will be battered by the absence of their most important role model. Your daughters will be gutted by the loss of their primary standard for opposite-sex comportment. They'll seek compensation elsewhere - in aggressive, seductive or rebellious behavior. They'll develop deep-seated psychological problems. They'll drop out of school, lose their jobs and get into trouble with the police.
You'll know no peace for a generation.
The odds are high that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are daunting that your divorce will disrupt your well-being. You'll lose your children and your property. You'll pay alimony, child support and attorney's fees. You'll be subject to state scrutiny over employment and spending decisions. You'll have chronic health problems. You'll watch helplessly as your children carry deep emotional scars into adulthood.
The odds are it doesn't pay for you to marry and have kids.
And the odds are that you will.
Unfortunately, most of what you say is the truth. But, many men don't live up to the obligations of support for the children; which is why the courts have taken over the control. It is so very sad that so many marriages end in divorce. Marriage is taken so lightly and I even hear couples say that if it doen't work, they'll "just get divorced". The vows should be taken seriously by both partners and both should make an effort, when times are rough or one of them, being human, errs. I am sorry you have had to deal with such devistation. Children do grow up - and - they ususally see the truth about their upbringing. Let's hope they will find you, love you and realize you are their father, no matter what. Good Luck to you |
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February 6, 2007, 10:13 am PST
Quote From: ncdad54 If you're like most men, you're married or you hope to marry some day. You think you deserve to live happily ever after but, if things don't work out that way, you'll get a civilized divorce and move on. You'll stay pals with your ex-wife and you'll see your kids as often as you want.
You have no idea what you're getting into.
The odds are 40 to 50 percent that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are 70 percent that your divorce will be filed by your wife. The odds are 80 percent that your wife will get custody of your children - plus child support, alimony and/or a hefty chunk of your property.
From the moment your wife files for divorce, the state, acting through the court, will assert authority over everything you own. The court then can give a major share to your wife by applying the law of "equitable distribution."
The law of equitable distribution is based on the "partnership theory of marriage." This theory holds that your marriage is a business partnership. Everything you earned during marriage you earned for the partnership. Therefore, upon divorce, all your accumulated assets must be split "equitably" between you and your "partner."
The theory also holds that if the property your ex is awarded at divorce doesn't yield enough to support her at the standard of living you established during the marriage, then you should "equitably" pay her the difference in alimony until she becomes self-supporting - in most states, even if the breakdown of the marriage was her fault.
The partnership theory of marriage doesn't quite cover everything you made during marriage: It doesn't cover your children.
Even though you and your ex were partners in the creation of your children, and even though you each contributed "equitably" to their upbringing, these considerations will carry little weight in court. Yielding to precedent and preconception, the court commonly will decide that it is in the "best interest" of your children to be in the sole custody of their mother.
As sole custodian, your ex will acquire primary parental authority to live with your children and to determine their general development, including their health care, education and religious training.
You may "visit" with them on scheduled weekends.
After the court awards your ex the sole custody of your children, it will award you something very special also: the obligation to pay child support.
Your child-support obligation will not be determined by your children's basic needs. The court first will calculate your income, which it then will proceed to tax at a predetermined "guideline" rate set by law. The guideline rate will vary according to the number of your children. It also may vary according to your income level and that of your ex.
At your child-support hearing, you'll be permitted to introduce evidence that the guideline rate is too high - that it will generate more money than is needed by your children or that it will leave you with too little to live on. But the law strongly presumes that the guideline rate produces the correct minimum amount of child support. The burden of proof will be on you to overcome this presumption. The court won't reduce your guideline rate, except in extreme circumstances.
a. If you are a wage-earner, the child support you owe will be withheld from your wages and paid directly to your ex without your ever having to write her a check.
b. Once in the clutches of the child-support system, you'll be systematically shorn of your economic autonomy.
c. If you lose your job, you must continue to pay the court-ordered amount. To get relief, you must file a petition with the court. You also may have to hire a lawyer to argue the petition -which, if unemployed, you would be hard-pressed to do.
d. In court, you won't get complete relief. Initially, the court will expect you to pay a large part of the ordered amount out of savings. It will expect you to reduce your own standard of living before it reduces your child-support obligation. You'll also have to pay - in full - any amounts you failed to pay from the day you lost your job until the day you filed your petition.
e. If you find a new job which pays less than your old one, the court needn't reduce your child-support obligation correspondingly. The court may suspect that you took the lower-paying job to reduce your child-support payments. The burden will be on you to prove you didn't.
f. If you leave your job to start your own business, and you pay yourself a minimal salary until the business prospers, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you about "putting your children first."
g. If you remarry and have children with your new wife, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you again, this time about not bringing more children into the world when you already have children enough to support. And if your new wife works, the court may look at her income as an indirect source of more child support.
h. In the meantime, your ex may claim that your children's needs have increased significantly, and she'll seek to increase your payments. You will have to prove that you can't afford the increase, and it won't be enough to show that your income hasn't increased significantly. If it has, your ex needn't show that the children's needs have increased correspondingly.
i. If your wages are not withheld and you fail to pay your child support, the state will garnish your pay, slap liens on your property, intercept your tax refunds, report you to credit agencies, suspend your driver's, professional and business licenses, hold you in contempt of court, put your face on a wanted poster, throw you in jail and deny you food stamps. But if your ex doesn't spend that very same support on the children, the state will do . nothing.
j. Your child-support obligation doesn't necessarily end when your children grow up, leave home and become legal adults. In many states, you may be ordered to contribute to their college tuition, room and board and their travel expenses, even though married parents can't be ordered to pay for these things.
You also may owe your ex one further payment: part or all of her "reasonable" attorney's fees.
The court will try to eliminate any financial advantage you have in selecting a lawyer. It will not make her fritter away her equitable share of your property on something so inequitable as her attorney's fees. It will make you fritter away your share. Equitable distribution, alimony and child-support law produce a net transfer of assets from you to your ex. Child-custody law produces a net transfer of custody from you to your ex.
From an economic point of view, divorce is a wealth-redistribution racket that forces fathers to make payments to mothers. From a social point of view, it is a family resocialization scheme that turns mothers into state-sponsored single parents and fathers into infrequent visitors of their estranged children.
When the economic and the social aspects of divorce law are netted, fathers are two-time losers. They must pay for the maintenance of women to whom they no longer are married and for the support of children to whom they no longer are full-time parents - all the while having to carry the costs of their own new households.
This skewed regime spawns strong reactionary forces. The strife which the divorce should have ended indeed has only just begun. Your ex will warm to calling all the shots. She may cancel your visitation now and then. If she's truly mean-spirited, she'll go much further. Under the cover of her court-appointed role as sole custodian, she'll systematically sever your relationship with the children: she'll badmouth you to them; she'll schedule their extracurricular activities during your visitation time; she even may accuse you of domestic violence and child abuse.
The authorities will act quickly to "protect" your children from you: They'll curtail your visitation during their investigation, you'll be restricted to being with your children only in the presence of a supervisor, and you'll be ordered to pay the supervisor's fees.
In the end, your children themselves will refuse to spend any time with you. Their brainwashing will be complete and irreversible. They will be alienated from you - forever.
More efficiently, your ex may simply move with the children to a distant community, with the law's acquiescence.
As the struggle wears on, your frustrations will deepen. You'll pass up overtime work rather than earn extra income for your ex. You'll be tempted to "do a fade": to flee the jurisdiction and disappear.
Your health will deteriorate. Your sleep will be disturbed. You'll feel fatigued and distracted. You'll sweat a lot. You'll develop elusive internal pain. The tests will rule out a tumor. The pills will help a little, but the pain won't go away.
While the law pits your ex against you, its ultimate victims will be your children. Your sons will be battered by the absence of their most important role model. Your daughters will be gutted by the loss of their primary standard for opposite-sex comportment. They'll seek compensation elsewhere - in aggressive, seductive or rebellious behavior. They'll develop deep-seated psychological problems. They'll drop out of school, lose their jobs and get into trouble with the police.
You'll know no peace for a generation.
The odds are high that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are daunting that your divorce will disrupt your well-being. You'll lose your children and your property. You'll pay alimony, child support and attorney's fees. You'll be subject to state scrutiny over employment and spending decisions. You'll have chronic health problems. You'll watch helplessly as your children carry deep emotional scars into adulthood.
The odds are it doesn't pay for you to marry and have kids.
And the odds are that you will.
I received child support from my ex-husband for 12 years. When my youngest turned 18 and I received my last payment, I asked for a print out of what I had received in all those years. It was $23,480. For 2 children. When I read your post, it made me a little angry as I raised 2 children and their father gave $35.90 biweekly in child support for many years. I went to the court system and was told that this is the guidlines for what he has to pay. When I think of the expenses incurred in one year for raising a child on a day to day basis, I think that the child support guidlines are way off and he got off the hook. When I left my husband and we were finally divorced, he blessed himself with boats, snowmobiles, 4 wheelers, 3 new vehicles, a newly remodeled hunting camp, trips all over the place and I was at home dealing with the day to day with our children. I got up in the morning and got the kids ready for school. He got himself up and went to work. When the kids came home from school, there were chores, homework, bedtime. He came home, he went hunting, fishing, went out with his buddies and had a good old time and bitched about paying child support. I was paying the doctor bills...which he didn't have to pay...because he was paying child support...$35.90, biweekly mind you. I was the one there everytime they had to go to the doctors, surgeries, braces, homework. I was the one there when their hearts were broken, when they needed someone to talk to, when they needed a pick me up. I look back it and took it all in stride. It cost me more to raise my children, on my measley pay checks, than what he paid in all those years. That wasn't even a one year income for him. He lived 10 minutes from our kids and spent very little time dealing with their issues. My children are grown now and when they need help, they come to me. It makes me angry, because when people bitch about having to do so, I would love to say, here, let's turn it around. I gave up all of my hopes and dreams because I loved my children, whole heartedly. There were many moments where I would of loved to "have a life" to have things, but my kids meant more to me than that. When I die, I don't want my kids to remember their mother for what I had, but what I gave to them...Love!!!
It angers me when the non-custodial parent bitches about paying child support. It way more for the custodial parent to financially raise a child, way more than the child support could even come close to. In the real world, I have never known a custodial parent who could give up their job because they were receiving enough child support so they didn't have to work.
The court system at one time had came up with a figure that it costs X amount of dollars to raise one child per year. At that time is was $12,000. Why is that amount not split between the two parents? It should be inflated every year with the cost of living factor. It took the two of you to make the child, the two of you should split the raising of the child 50/50. It's called commitment!!!
Most parents that do have to pay child support will take a less paying job, just to get out of paying more child support. I have known people that have done it and gave them my feelings on it. They are mad that they have to give their ex money. This is not about the ex..it is about your kids. What that ex is paying on a day to day basis to help in maintaing their children the non-custodial parent should be contributing to the raising of their children. If it were the other way around, she would be giving you the money and I bet you you would complain that it wasn't enough. I have a hard time with this, because before you focus on the money aspect, these are your children, and you have the responsibility as their parent to be responsible for them. Just because you and their mother are no longer together, doesn't mean you stop paying for them.
I hear hurt and anger in your post, some which are probably legitimate. Our legal system on every aspect is screwed up and some things just aren't fair, but these are your kids, they need to be maintained by both you and your ex, not only financially, but emotionally, spiritually, etc.
As for your statements regarding if you go into arrearages? If I did not take care of my children financially as the custodial parent, it would be considered abuse...I would go to jail and loose my kids and be put into the legal system as an abuser. Having your income tax garnished, or your assets levied would be minor in comparison. Paying child support is not a sentencing. It is part of being a responsible parent to your children.
As for the monies being taken from your check...absolutely. Why do you think they started this? Men/women were not paying. I think it was the smartest thing the court system did.
Just my thoughts as a recipient of child support. Not all things are fair in life. It all has to do with your attitude.
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February 6, 2007, 12:05 pm PST
Quote From: ncdad54 If you're like most men, you're married or you hope to marry some day. You think you deserve to live happily ever after but, if things don't work out that way, you'll get a civilized divorce and move on. You'll stay pals with your ex-wife and you'll see your kids as often as you want.
You have no idea what you're getting into.
The odds are 40 to 50 percent that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are 70 percent that your divorce will be filed by your wife. The odds are 80 percent that your wife will get custody of your children - plus child support, alimony and/or a hefty chunk of your property.
From the moment your wife files for divorce, the state, acting through the court, will assert authority over everything you own. The court then can give a major share to your wife by applying the law of "equitable distribution."
The law of equitable distribution is based on the "partnership theory of marriage." This theory holds that your marriage is a business partnership. Everything you earned during marriage you earned for the partnership. Therefore, upon divorce, all your accumulated assets must be split "equitably" between you and your "partner."
The theory also holds that if the property your ex is awarded at divorce doesn't yield enough to support her at the standard of living you established during the marriage, then you should "equitably" pay her the difference in alimony until she becomes self-supporting - in most states, even if the breakdown of the marriage was her fault.
The partnership theory of marriage doesn't quite cover everything you made during marriage: It doesn't cover your children.
Even though you and your ex were partners in the creation of your children, and even though you each contributed "equitably" to their upbringing, these considerations will carry little weight in court. Yielding to precedent and preconception, the court commonly will decide that it is in the "best interest" of your children to be in the sole custody of their mother.
As sole custodian, your ex will acquire primary parental authority to live with your children and to determine their general development, including their health care, education and religious training.
You may "visit" with them on scheduled weekends.
After the court awards your ex the sole custody of your children, it will award you something very special also: the obligation to pay child support.
Your child-support obligation will not be determined by your children's basic needs. The court first will calculate your income, which it then will proceed to tax at a predetermined "guideline" rate set by law. The guideline rate will vary according to the number of your children. It also may vary according to your income level and that of your ex.
At your child-support hearing, you'll be permitted to introduce evidence that the guideline rate is too high - that it will generate more money than is needed by your children or that it will leave you with too little to live on. But the law strongly presumes that the guideline rate produces the correct minimum amount of child support. The burden of proof will be on you to overcome this presumption. The court won't reduce your guideline rate, except in extreme circumstances.
a. If you are a wage-earner, the child support you owe will be withheld from your wages and paid directly to your ex without your ever having to write her a check.
b. Once in the clutches of the child-support system, you'll be systematically shorn of your economic autonomy.
c. If you lose your job, you must continue to pay the court-ordered amount. To get relief, you must file a petition with the court. You also may have to hire a lawyer to argue the petition -which, if unemployed, you would be hard-pressed to do.
d. In court, you won't get complete relief. Initially, the court will expect you to pay a large part of the ordered amount out of savings. It will expect you to reduce your own standard of living before it reduces your child-support obligation. You'll also have to pay - in full - any amounts you failed to pay from the day you lost your job until the day you filed your petition.
e. If you find a new job which pays less than your old one, the court needn't reduce your child-support obligation correspondingly. The court may suspect that you took the lower-paying job to reduce your child-support payments. The burden will be on you to prove you didn't.
f. If you leave your job to start your own business, and you pay yourself a minimal salary until the business prospers, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you about "putting your children first."
g. If you remarry and have children with your new wife, the court needn't grant you child-support relief. It may lecture you again, this time about not bringing more children into the world when you already have children enough to support. And if your new wife works, the court may look at her income as an indirect source of more child support.
h. In the meantime, your ex may claim that your children's needs have increased significantly, and she'll seek to increase your payments. You will have to prove that you can't afford the increase, and it won't be enough to show that your income hasn't increased significantly. If it has, your ex needn't show that the children's needs have increased correspondingly.
i. If your wages are not withheld and you fail to pay your child support, the state will garnish your pay, slap liens on your property, intercept your tax refunds, report you to credit agencies, suspend your driver's, professional and business licenses, hold you in contempt of court, put your face on a wanted poster, throw you in jail and deny you food stamps. But if your ex doesn't spend that very same support on the children, the state will do . nothing.
j. Your child-support obligation doesn't necessarily end when your children grow up, leave home and become legal adults. In many states, you may be ordered to contribute to their college tuition, room and board and their travel expenses, even though married parents can't be ordered to pay for these things.
You also may owe your ex one further payment: part or all of her "reasonable" attorney's fees.
The court will try to eliminate any financial advantage you have in selecting a lawyer. It will not make her fritter away her equitable share of your property on something so inequitable as her attorney's fees. It will make you fritter away your share. Equitable distribution, alimony and child-support law produce a net transfer of assets from you to your ex. Child-custody law produces a net transfer of custody from you to your ex.
From an economic point of view, divorce is a wealth-redistribution racket that forces fathers to make payments to mothers. From a social point of view, it is a family resocialization scheme that turns mothers into state-sponsored single parents and fathers into infrequent visitors of their estranged children.
When the economic and the social aspects of divorce law are netted, fathers are two-time losers. They must pay for the maintenance of women to whom they no longer are married and for the support of children to whom they no longer are full-time parents - all the while having to carry the costs of their own new households.
This skewed regime spawns strong reactionary forces. The strife which the divorce should have ended indeed has only just begun. Your ex will warm to calling all the shots. She may cancel your visitation now and then. If she's truly mean-spirited, she'll go much further. Under the cover of her court-appointed role as sole custodian, she'll systematically sever your relationship with the children: she'll badmouth you to them; she'll schedule their extracurricular activities during your visitation time; she even may accuse you of domestic violence and child abuse.
The authorities will act quickly to "protect" your children from you: They'll curtail your visitation during their investigation, you'll be restricted to being with your children only in the presence of a supervisor, and you'll be ordered to pay the supervisor's fees.
In the end, your children themselves will refuse to spend any time with you. Their brainwashing will be complete and irreversible. They will be alienated from you - forever.
More efficiently, your ex may simply move with the children to a distant community, with the law's acquiescence.
As the struggle wears on, your frustrations will deepen. You'll pass up overtime work rather than earn extra income for your ex. You'll be tempted to "do a fade": to flee the jurisdiction and disappear.
Your health will deteriorate. Your sleep will be disturbed. You'll feel fatigued and distracted. You'll sweat a lot. You'll develop elusive internal pain. The tests will rule out a tumor. The pills will help a little, but the pain won't go away.
While the law pits your ex against you, its ultimate victims will be your children. Your sons will be battered by the absence of their most important role model. Your daughters will be gutted by the loss of their primary standard for opposite-sex comportment. They'll seek compensation elsewhere - in aggressive, seductive or rebellious behavior. They'll develop deep-seated psychological problems. They'll drop out of school, lose their jobs and get into trouble with the police.
You'll know no peace for a generation.
The odds are high that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are daunting that your divorce will disrupt your well-being. You'll lose your children and your property. You'll pay alimony, child support and attorney's fees. You'll be subject to state scrutiny over employment and spending decisions. You'll have chronic health problems. You'll watch helplessly as your children carry deep emotional scars into adulthood.
The odds are it doesn't pay for you to marry and have kids.
And the odds are that you will.
Sounds like you’ve had a bad experience and that you are bitter. Throughout your entire message, there is resentment and blame. You will always carry the resentment, unless you acknowledge the actions that you took that led you to your situation. Blaming everyone else might feel good for awhile, but in the end, it only creates more bitterness. There were many times when you could have stepped up to the plate and given your children to emotional support that they wanted and so desperately needed; but you allowed your resentment against their mother get in the way. Complaining about the amount of money needed to raise your children is such a cliché. You honestly believe your children had all of their needs met because of the child support that you paid? In most cases, that is impossible. The scale used by the court system usually gives the custodial parent very little- for example, a man makes $450 a week as his take-home pay; child support is $55 a week. You can’t keep a roof over a child’s head, food in his stomach, and clothes on his back with that amount of money. This amount of money is a small drop in a large sea of needs. If it makes you feel better to complain about your life instead of doing something about it, then knock yourself out. But if you came here for advice, it is time for you to take action and make changes so that you can experience happiness, it is never too late. |
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