Broken Hearts and Families

Child support is another thing about family court that again awards the person who has custody, and sometimes punishes the person who doesn't get custody of the child. Let me explain this further. I recieve child support for my daughter from her father. This is because he chooses to have her live with me and only see her every other weekend. He can see her whenever he wants, but this is the agreement we have for now due to his work schedule and the distance between our homes. We live in the same town, but it is about a 20 minute drive out of his way to work for school. My husband would be more than happy to be able to drive his daughter to school 30 minutes away each day, however he isn't given the opportunity. This post isn't to bash my ex, because I think he is a great man. I am just stating that I am someone who recieves child support and I don't feel it is fair to the person who pays. Here is why:

1- To the parent who is only allowed standard visitation. Child support is based on the number of overnights the parent has with their child. The court decides that a parent cannot have their child although that is not what the parent wants. Then the court says not only can you not have your child, you need to pay more money to the other parent. Many people are happy to support their child, so they should have them in their home more so they can offer them more than just the financial support.

2- Child support is based on Gross income. How many people get to take home their gross income? Taxes come out first. Also, the person paying the child support cannot claim the child on their taxes. So there is no tax deduction, and you are paying on your gross income. Doesn't make sense to me. If nothing else the person paying should be able to claim the child support on their taxes.

3-Let's say you are the person who is paying child support and you lose your job. You have no choice but to pay that child support. If you do not you go to jail. While you are in jail your child support is piling up, and you obviously cannot work in jail. You cannot get out of jail until you pay the child support. It's a no win situation. This isn't only for total non-payment. Let's say your payment is $100 a week and you pay $60 because that's all you can afford. You still go to jail. The court will tell you sell your house, your car, be homeless if you have to. You still have to pay this child support.

4- The person who has custody can just choose not to work or work a job with little pay so they can collect child support. In my husband's situation his ex-wife works 10 hours a week as a waitress. She has two college degrees. She didn't even work for more than a year. Even better, this woman lives with her parents. She has no rent or mortgage. The normal cost of living. Yet he has to pay her child support.

Do not get me wrong when I discuss this. I know that child support is neccessary. I know there are many people who don't pay their child support leaving all of the burden on one person. I have seen many people suffer because they get no help. I don't think that is right. I again am talking about situations where you have a parent that wants to have their child in their home. A parent that takes their child on vacations, keeps a room in their house for them, buys them clothing, school supplies, and birthday parties.

I recently had a friend say to me that if we had custody of my step-daughter we would feel that joint custody doesn't work. I am sure we would. It's hard to know the pain of being a non-custodial parent until you are one. Having been on both sides, I can assure you as a custodial parent I would have never understood the pain of a non-custodial parent. I want to clarify that when I speak of custody, I am really speaking about time spent with your child. No matter how you shake it, if you are on the side of the "visiting parent" you become just that in your child's life- a visitor. You cannot truly be a parent to a child you see every other weekend. It is the day to day interaction that children need. I want to put out here how it really feels to be on the side of the "visiting parent". Every other weekend you have to plan and squeeze in two full weeks of activities into two half days and one full day. Sometimes, you might only get to spend one weekend in an entire month with your child. That's right, if it so happens Thanksgiving break falls on your regular scheduled weekend and it is the custodial parents year for Thanksgiving you won't get to see your child for THREE full weeks. This will happen again at Spring Break and maybe Christmas. How would you feel if you were denied seeing your children for three weeks at a time? I also had another friend say over summer vacation "not seeing your child for a few weeks isn't bad, I send mine to see their grandparents for a few weeks over the summer." I am sure if you have your children every day a few weeks over the summer isn't that bad. However, when you have 4 overnight visits a month with your child every second becomes precious. Perhaps if we all knew what it was like to live without our children we would be less likely to deny one parent the time. The fact that the courts order this kind of visitation alienating one parent is not in any child's best interest. All too often you have a bitter ex-spouse who uses thier child as a weapon against their ex. This is the way it is in our case. It is so evident that my step-daughter is a weapon against my husband. Anytime he and his ex get into a disagreement she will deny him time with his daughter. That's right, his daughter is the one to get punished. Further, the parent with custody has so much opportunity to shape the child's mind and turn them against the noncustodial parent. Look at it from the child's view. Why shouldn't children have both parents after a divorce? I assure you that in almost all situations both people played a part in that divorce. Or perhaps someone was a bad husband or wife, does that make them a bad parent? There are a lot of people who love their kids and want to be involved. Why are we accepting this standard visitation in today's society? Don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of people out there that wish they had someone to help with their children. I have a friend who is a single mom and has two beautiful girls. Their father won't pay child support, won't visit, and will not even call to talk to them. This woman works everyday, takes care of those two girls by herself all of the time, and I know she wishes she had someone to help raise those girls. I know there are people out there who want to walk away, but I also know there are people who want to be involved and can't.

So here we are on a Sunday night after weekend visitation again. This is how Sunday breaks down for our family every other weekend. The entire day is one of sadness. We try to enjoy the time together, but we know it is ending. The long two weeks are ahead of us again. Fighting back the tears we try not to let our little girl know how much we will miss her, how we want to tuck her in, pray with her, kiss her goodnight, sing songs, read books, and just see her face in the morning. How the next two weeks a little peice of our family will be missing. How each time we drop her off our hearts break and the pain is there all over again. This also effects her step-sister. These two girls love eachother so much. My step-daughter doesn't remember a time when her sister wasn't in her life. Maybe you ask "what's the big deal, you will see her again soon?" The big deal is, you miss out on a lot when you only get to be involved on such limited scale. The big deal is, your influence is so small. The big deal is, we love this child.

One of the most amazing things I heard the Family Court say was "Joint Custody is not favored with parents who don't get along." This statement really had me in a state of confusion. Just wondering, how many people who get along get divorced? Isn't the fundamental reason people get a divorce is because they can no longer "get along"? Don't get me wrong, some people may get divorced over domestic violence, an affair, substance abuse, or a million other reasons. At the end of the day, it all stems from a breakdown in the relationship. I am divorced and my ex-husband and I have a great relationship. We are not the average divorced couple. I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard people say "I have never seen divorced people get along like you two." That is not the norm. People who can "get along" can usually work things out before ever getting to a trial. South Carolina Family Court orders these parents to mediation before a trial, and the attorneys push for a settlement. No one wants to go to trial. The day of the actual trial for my husband the judge took up 4 hours trying to have both parties mediate a solution. It just wasn't going to happen. So, the judge makes her ruling and she decides because they don't get along only one person should have total control over their daughter. Only one person should be able to have their child for the first day of school for her entire life. Only one parent should make decisions for the child. Only one parent should get to see their child 23 out of 31 days a month. Let me back up and say when I am hashing this out I am not talking about one parent who doesn't want to be involved. I am not talking about someone who is unfit or cannot provide for their child. What I am talking about here is a father with a nice home, a steady job, and someone who has always been involved with his child's life. On the other hand the mother who was awarded custody lives with her parents and cannot afford a place of her own. Oh, and if you were wondering from my first post she married the guy that lives in another state. He still lives there and she lives in South Carolina with her parents. That's a post for another day. Back to my original point, people get divorced because they don't get along. Giving one person all of the power in a situation when people don't get along doesn't help them to get along. It helps give one side ammunition against the other. Unfortunately, the ammunition in a case like this is a child. Children are used as weapons against their parents everyday! I wonder what one parent thinks they are showing their child when they have nothing but hatred for the other parent? Does that child not see the other parent in themselves? Do they wonder if their mom or dad hates them too? What I hear is that therapists say it isn't in a child's best interest two live in two homes and go back and forth. I want to ask, is going every other weekend not going back and forth? Is making a child a visitor in a parent's home really best? Is putting a child in the middle of a power struggle not going to harm the child? I am so confused how the law thinks it is in any child's best interest to alienate one parent. If you have ever seen a visitation order you would know that's exactly what it does. I mean really, who wants to ask permission to see their own child? Why should someone have to? I know there are a lot of parents out there who don't care. Some want to just walk away and be an every other weekend parent. That's great for them. What about the parents that want to be involved? Why does the law make it so hard on them? I feel that in a case when all things are equal, the parents should have shared custody of a child. End of discussion. They need to be put in a situation where they have no choice but to figure out how to get along. The child gets to benefit from having two parents involved, and no one has power to use their child as a weapon.

My husband and I have been in an ongoing family court battle over his daughter for almost four years now. What started out as what he thought would be an amicable divorce ended in lies, deceit, hurt, and an ongoing power struggle. I wish I could just put the whole story out here, but for legal reasons I cannot. Since we are still in pending litigation everything I say has to be anonymous. I am going to give a brief background. When my husband and then wife decided to separate four years ago they sat down and talked about how things would go. They had been together for ten years, and he thought he really knew her. He loved her, but things just weren't working. He couldn't figure out why the marriage was breaking down, but it was. She wouldn't talk to him, she would sleep all of the time, she just wasn't the person he married. He didn't understand what was happening, but he knew they couldn't go on that way. At the time they had a one year old daughter. He had major concerns about her care of their daughter, but chose to trust her. They had known each other since they were in high school, and this was the only serious relationship they had. When they first separated my husband agreed for her to stay in the house they were renting and to pay the majority of the bills until the lease ran out. She worked two jobs, but he felt it was his duty to provide. After all, he still loved her and his daughter. Initially she would keep their daughter more than he did because he was renting a single room with no space. He wasn't making much money and keeping little for himself. He would go and have lunch with her, take her to the park, and keep her some evenings. There wasn't a set schedule, but he didn't have a problem with that because he could see her anytime he wanted to. The agreement was that they would have her 50/50. After a short period of time he started noticing that his daughter was always sick, her mom was putting her to bed at 6:00 at night, and none of the bills were getting paid although he was giving her plenty of money. He also noticed her drinking and driving one night when dropping off her daughter's things. To make a long story short he found out his ex-wife had a 16 year history of drug abuse, and admittedly was using drugs while caring for their child. When he found this out he asked her if she would be willing to take a drug test. He offered to pay for it, take care of their daughter while she sought help, and to do anything to help her get clean. While this was going on she met a man on Facebook and became engaged to him after only 19 days of meeting. Don't let me forget to mention this man lives in another state 12 hours away and they had not met in person. He had not even met their daughter. When she went to visit this man she told my husband she wanted to move "and there was nothing that said she had to be the one to take care of their daughter". Her parents called my husband and told him he needed to take care of his little girl because their daughter was driving drunk with their grandchild, staying up all night, and they didn't think she could handle it. My husband repeatedly asked her to take a drug test and she just wouldn't do it. She even lied about taking one. He told her if she wouldn't take a drug test he would take custody of their daughter until she could prove she was clean. After several weeks of her lying and refusing to take a test he found an attorney and took custody of their daughter. While he was waiting for the temporary hearing his ex's parents picked up their child from daycare and gave her to his ex. so she could move to another state with her before an order was put in place. At this time plane tickets had been purchased, daycare had been researched, and all of this was kept from my husband. He called the police, but since there was no court order there was nothing he could do. A mutual friend on Facebook had seen where she had posted her plans to take their daughter to the other state and let him know. He was able to convince his ex to allow him to see his daughter. Once he had her, he had no choice but to keep her from her mother until they had a court order in place. At the time of the temporary hearing his ex agreed to give him primary custody. However, she then turned right around and filed for sole custody. After $30,000 and 18 months of having custody of his child the court awarded the mother SOLE custody allowing my husband standard visitation. Her reasons were "The mother had writed her boat" and "joint custody arrangements aren't favored when two people don't get along." This is just a glimpse into the start of this. What happened in the trial and what the judge said are things that I cannot even begin to understand. Trust me, I will get to that later.