A Quick-Start Guide for the Divorcing Dad: The Off Times
When you go down the path of divorce, however you got there, a few realities are going to rush up and greet you rather quickly if you are a man. There are two important issues that it is critical for you to understand. Time and Money are the only negotiating points you have. Let’s jump straight into the story, shall we…
|
When my time with them dropped so significantly, I began to crater on the days and weeks that I had zero access to their smiling faces.
|
The legal system is set up to support single moms and to force dads to make their child support payments, regardless of changing situations or dad’s ability to pay. That’s not their problem. And the typical support package includes the Standard Possession Order and some percentage of your income, depending on the number of children you have. Let’s get real clear on both of these new realities in your life, as a dad.
SPO (Standard Possession Order) is the parenting schedule you will most likely be offered. The reasons behind this 70/30 parenting split were established by the state over years of divorce and custody battles and negotiations. The rationale behind it sounds like it made sense 30 years ago.
The mother as the primary care giver will be given the majority of the time with the kids. This allows the continuity of their primary relationship in this trying time. This leadership role will be called the custodial parent. The Attorney General’s office, should they ever be needed, will treat the custodial parent like a client. The non-custodial parent, on the other had, is a bit of a second class citizen. This morning when I was confirming some of the details about my current arrangement, I noticed this contact list on the AG’s website.
The custodial parent get’s their own line. As do employers and people not so certain of their paternity obligations. All others please call the general number and get put on hold and endless transfers through voice activated systems. “If you are the custodial parent, press one. If you are the non-custodial parent [the only reason you are calling us is because of a problem, and you’re probably a dead beat dad] press two.
Time and Money. Those are the two negotiations you will have to settle in order to get divorced. I was the uber-cooperative divorcé. I agreed to everything. I was told it would be in the best interest of the children for the mom to get the house, the child support, and the lion’s share of the time with the kids. I had a naive idea at the outset that we would divorce 50/50 just like we had parented. I was wrong. And the state’s attorneys have given us a lot of precedents that show this role for the dad is the best one.
Non-Custodial Parent. Standard Possession Order. Child Support. Those three little phrases are about to become very important in your life. And your understanding, navigation, and negotiation in setting them up, might save you a lot of the heartache and drama that I’ve been through.
TIME
The 70-30 split sounds a bit abstract until you are in middle of your “off” week and you are trying to imagine surviving the next 4 days until you see your kids. Here’s how the typical schedule breaks out. Dad gets the kids every other weekend. During dad’s ON week he gets two additional nights. Thursday and Friday. If your kids are already in school, that’s really after school time, and getting them up for school on Friday morning and Monday morning, if that’s your schedule. (All schedules can vary and still be basically the SPO.) On the OFF week, you may or may not get a single night sleep over. Again if your kids are in school, that’s really one cycle of feeding, homework, and back to school the next morning. Those single night stays were hard. The loss when taking them to school on the off Fridays was brutal.
|
I struggled to stay brave while I was with them, and suffer greatly when they were gone.
|
Time with my kids was the most important aspect of my life after they were born. Everything I did, I did in consideration of my then-wife and my kids. I centered my hopes and dreams around being a great dad, and being there for them every night, every volleyball game, every time they needed advice. And when they were younger, say after 3rd and 5th grades, they really did need a lot of interaction and caring. When my time with them dropped so significantly, I began to crater on the days and weeks that I had zero access to their smiling faces. I might have done better to fight and receive a more equitable divorce. Maybe Joint-Custody and a real 50/50 schedule would’ve provided more connections between us. Maybe I’d have been able to get my son into tennis or bike riding. Maybe I wouldn’t have crashed so hard into depression.
When I was thinking about the math last night, I was surprised to understand that she had the kids more than twice as much as I did. The 70/30 split is very abstract until you are losing so many nights and weekends with your kids. I still think a 50/50 schedule would’ve been better for my kids. And today, I have some ideas that might make that possible. But today my kids are teenagers. Today they have their own independent lives. Today, my interactions with them, even when they are here, is fleeing, abstract, and often superficial. I dig being with them, and I try and make myself open for their questions. But at this stage the lead in the relationship is up to them. Asking your kid, “What happened in school today,” will never get more than a “not much.” When your kids want to chat they will seek you out. By being available, still only 8 days out of a 30 day month, those opportunities have smaller windows.
So my ex-wife gets more than twice the time with the kids. Wow. It’s a lot. But until you’re IN DIVORCE and have kids, you can’t really understand what the loss means. It took the breath out of me for over two years as I struggled to stay brave while I was with them, and suffer greatly when they were gone. The OFF parent has a lonely road ahead.
MONEY
This is where the rubber meets the road in divorce. In general the dad will have the child support obligation. The idea is that he is often the primary bread-winner, or at least as a man, employable at a higher wage. And as the story goes, the kids and their mom should be able to continue with the lifestyle that they have grown used to. (No mention of what’s about to happen to dad’s lifestyle.) And while that language sounds okay, the execution of these documents are often brutal and pugilistic.
Here’s an abbreviated version of what my “deal” looks like.
29% of my take home pay will be paid to the ex-wife for the children’s care and feeding. That money is tax-free to her, since the taxes were taken out of my wages prior to the withholding. Wow, that’s a pretty good deal. Seems like it should be a deduction for me and the taxes should be taken out equally. But that’s not how it goes.
|
When you are considering divorce, as a man, consider the two most important issues as a parent: Time and Money.
|
And if you have or hope to have a high-paying job, that’s the mark you will use in the negotiations for the decree. In my case the rough number was set at 1,200. Okay. But wait, that’s not all. In most cases the dad is also responsible to pay for health insurance. Again, this might be more fair if it was split 50/50 but that’s not usually the way it’s done. Again, I think this was set up when dad had the big job, and this would prevent him from tanking that job and losing the good insurance as a way of punishing his now ex-wife. Either way, this additional obligation is tacked on to the sum of $650 – $1,100 depending on your plan, and depending on your employment status.
So, just to sum things up for you. At this very moment, since I am employed by a contractor who does not offer health insurance benefits. My monthly total in child support obligation is $2,300. Wow. That’s a chunk of change. It puts a significant squeeze on my opportunities for employment, since I have to make that before I can begin to think about rent, food, car insurance, phones, for myself. If you start every month with a $2,300 bill, that’s a real demotivational blow. It has felt insurmountable from time to time.
And when I lost my job, as a result of the tanking economy, the child support obligations or payments didn’t change. I could’ve hired an attorney and asked for a reduced child support payment, but I didn’t have the time or the money to do that. I was trying to figure out how I was going to keep my house. The house that I’d managed to buy, in spite of the large child support payment, when I landed a great new job, post divorce. Only the great job didn’t last. The startup changed their business model and eliminated my director-level position.
The killing blow, the unforgivable transgression that I’ve had to forgive, came when my ex-wife decided the proper course of action would be to turn my late support payments over to the AG’s office for “enforcement.” This one act of anger, has cost me and my family thousands of dollars and has actually gotten less money into my kids pockets. And the debt, as seen by the state, is a huge lien on my credit. This one act caused me to lose the house. And for one year, I actually had to live with my mom again. Fortunately, she and the kids and I had a humorous attitude about the whole thing.
“It’s better than living under a bridge,” my mom would joke. And she had a garage that we converted into a place for my bed. The kids each had rooms. So in my mom’s house, at least I was able to accommodate my weekends. By filing with the AG’s office, while I was trying to restructure my debt so I could keep the house, was the last act of anger and aggression that she could take. She took it. I lost everything.
From those ashes however, and even under the $2,300 monthly payment, and now a big fat lien on my credit, that prevented me from qualifying for a used car loan when my car was destroyed in a hail storm, despite all of that, I’m still surviving. I wouldn’t say thriving yet, but I’m getting by.
When you are considering divorce, as a man, consider the two most important issues as a parent.
- TIME: If you parented 50/50 and would like to continue to maintain your relationship with your children at the highest level, you should go to the court and ask for 50/50.
- MONEY: When you negotiate child support you can do two things very differently than I did. Ask for joint-custody. You can then be assured you will have equal rights if things ever get to the AG’s office. And make sure the amount you agree to in the decree, the amount that will determine your child support payments, is either conservative, or real. In my case the amount was set on historical data and on the hope of a promising job interview, that didn’t pan out.
Finally, if you’re going to agree to a cooperative divorce, make sure you add in a clause about NEVER INVOLVING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE. EVER. My ex and I were in an argument about the timing of my child support payments and how I was planning on catching up, when I lost my job. She waited a few months. At this time she began to get very belligerent. She refused to meet with me in person about parenting or school issues. Her response to my email requests were simple “when can I expect my money.” That shut down all opportunities for co-parenting that summer.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
@theoffparent
back to Single Parenting
This early negotiation breakdown is chronicled short summary.
The big AG breakdown in chronological order and how my life fell through the cracks.
- Stinging the Hand that Feeds (May 2013)
- Winning the Battle, Losing the War (May 2013)
- Me, Dead Beat Dad? (May 2013)
- The Good Guy Dad, Reassessing My Dead Beat Status (May 2013)
- I Must Be Insane, It’s the End of the World and I Feel Fine (July 2013)
- I Am Failing in One Critical Area of Life (Sept 2013)
- Tell Me Again, Why You Think This is a Good Idea (Oct. 2013)
- Can Things Get Worse? Yes, Easy! (Oct. 2013)
- On the Turning Away, Fighting with your Ex About Money (Nov. 2013)
- Too Positive, Too Optimistic (March 2014)
Giving the Blunt Mom Her Due
Written in reaction, not response, to some damn fine writin, over there at Blunt Moms. Yep. I love’m.
And I wouldn’t have my woman/partner any other way. If you are sweeping stuff under the rug and not letting the kettle boil over once in a while, you’re probably not doing anyone a favor. Perhaps in my last marriage, my emotionally unavailable wife was not expressing her angst and anger until it started coming out uncontrollably in random “fuck yous” and other sideways outbursts.
In the past, I have admitted to my daughter that I can be an asshole. That I am less than perfect, as a mom, and that I have a lot to apologize and feel guilty for.
Today is not that day.
Today is not that day. Today is not a day for apologies, but for expressing the fucked-up-ness that is my ex-wife today. She’s not just exclaiming random fuck yous in the form of her continued assessment that the AG’s office being attached like a pit bull to my ass, is a good thing. She even says things like this:
Unless your experience of the AG is different from what everyone I’ve talked with there tells me (and maybe it is – the AG has f’d up parts for sure), the reason you’ve had to suffer the ugly end of their enforcement isn’t because we’re in the AG system, but rather is because you at first did not respond to their several non-enforcement-level attempts to get you in the system…
Really? “everyone I’ve talked with there…” She’s using the staff of the AG’s office as a validation for her continued request for “enforcement.” SRSLY? This was her opening expression of GOALS yesterday.
How quaint. Keeping the hobble on your ex-husband horse is a good idea. Because…
|
Dad’s who are behind on their child support are the enemy of the state and debtors no matter the circumstances. We are defaulting on our obligation.
|
She says in her mind that the AG’s office is the only reason she’s gotten paid in the last 18 months. And I try to remind her of the sequence of events that were set in motion by her AG action… But this isn’t a conversation we ever have. She’s got the law, the decree, and the self-righteousness to see the debt as an entitlement. And I suppose she’s right. Sure. And I’m good for it. When I have the money.
And it’s funny, these conversations always seem to come out when I’m doing well. She sees my new job and thinks, “Okay, now’s the time to get caught up, apply a bit more pressure, send some crappy “positive sounding” emails.
WAIT!
Perhaps my perspective is off. She is the Saint Mom. She’s the one fighting the good fight for our kids. As she sees it, the AG’s office is insurance that I’m not going to what… skip town?
It is true that there are dead beat dads and high-conflict divorces, but ours is neither. And in all her talking about “doing what’s right for the kids” makes me a bit sick. She has no concept that forcing the father of her children out of his house was a bad idea. She gives not one fuck that the AG’s lien on my credit prevents me from getting a used car loan of any kind. Or that several of my high-paying gig quests were ended at the “background – credit check” stage of the negotiations.
In her “saintly mind” the AG’s office is her new champion. And I’m merely the lazy, irresponsible, and dead beat horse that is not performing up to speed. I suppose if glue were a possibility that could pay back my debt to her, that would be okay. Well, except for the fact that the longer I live, the more money she can expect from me.
Again, I know I’m going about this all wrong. It’s not HER money. It’s money for the “the care and maintenance of the children.” Yes, that’s true. And if I felt the kids were missing out on some things because of it… Wait. Again, I’m having epiphany after epiphany here. My kids ARE missing out on many things. But the most egregious of those things is the loss of time they get to spend with their dad.
We were a 50/50 household. We entered into a cooperative divorce negotiation. And somewhere along the way I was given more like a 70/30 divorce. That’s what the real numbers work out to in the Standard Possession Order and the Non-Custodial parent. And give the old AG’s office a call, you’ll be amazed how they segment the calls off by that distinction.
|
The gun you keep firing at me is causing a lot of collateral damage. And you’re “saintly” aggression is also preventing you from letting go of your anger and righteousness.
|
“If you’re the custodial parent press one.” I’m guessing this is more like a service and support call. “How can we help you?”
“If you’re the non-custodial parent press two.” This is more like a collections agency. Dads who are behind on their child support are the enemy of the state and debtors no matter the circumstances. We are defaulting on our obligation. Even if we are attempting to be transparent about everything.
Dear Ex Wife, a portion of my income, every single cent I earn, is owed to my kids. This is true. With our two kids it works out to about 25%. That’s fine. But when I have no income, those promissory notes continue to pile up. And when you strike me down with your actions, guess what happens? More loss of income. More promissory notes. More “dead beat dad” letters from your pals at the AG’s office. So, keep your narcissistic view of the world wrapped in
Yeah, the old trope is looking a bit worn from here, my dear ex-wife.
I can tell you what I think that is, but you’re not listening. And maybe that’s the root of the problem after all. We stopped listening to each other at some point. I stopped hearing your complaints and “fuck yous” and you stopped hearing my “here’s an idea” solutions. And maybe, the cards were set against us in the long run. “Just two very different people,” you might say.
But I think it’s a bit more fundamental than that. You got what you wanted. A house. A couple kids. And when I failed to perform up to your expected (maybe psychologically required) expectations financially, and you realized, as the kids were becoming more independent that you’d have to go get a real job too. It was a nice run, when we could swing it, but we always agreed that WE would support the family.
I suppose now we are getting that chance. But your continued reliance on the AG’s office is an affront that hurts all of us. The gun you keep firing at me is causing a lot of collateral damage. And you’re “saintly” aggression is also preventing you from letting go of your anger and righteousness.
If we are two parents trying to do “what’s best for the kids” then we’d cooperate again. You’d have to let go of the state’s attorneys, but in return you might get back the healthy horse/dad who can share the wealth when the good times come.
I’m expecting you’re going to stay with the Goddamn Saint role. And I get it. You’ve done a kick ass job being a mom in this last six years. But you’ve completely sucked as a human being and compassionate co-parent.
Sincerely,
John McElhenney – life coach austin texas
Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | @theoffparent
As a certified life coach, I’ve been helping men and women find fulfilling relationships. If you’d like to chat for 30-minutes about your dating/relationship challenges, I always give the first 30-session away for free. LEARN ABOUT COACHING WITH JOHN. There are no obligations to continue. But I get excited every time I talk to someone new. I can offer new perspectives and experiences from my post-divorce dating journey. Most of all, I can offer hope.
< back to The Hard Stuff posts
related posts:
- The Painful Business of Divorce
- Your Contempt for Me is Hurting All of Us
- The Humans Of Divorce, Dear AG’s Office Special Cases Officer Mr. McK!
- And Just As We Reach A Calm Moment
- What I Still Fail to Understand About My Ex-wife
- When Kids, Money, and Divorce Collide
- Trusting Your Unreliable Ex
reference: Mommy is a Goddamn Saint – Blunt Moms
image: ave maria, creative commons usage
What An Angry or Distant Divorced Parent Looks Like
I’m not that guy. I have never exited my role as a father. While I am no longer in a marriage with my ex-wife I am very much available to her for support, flexible child care, advice, and parenting. That’s what we do. That’s what we did all along. Even in our pre-kid relationship we were reading books about 50/50 parenting, and attachment parenting. We entered this relationship together as hopeful parents, and now as divorced parents something else has come into play.
I’ve seen what an angry and distant father looks like after divorce. My dad, though an alcoholic, exited the marriage with an enormous amount of anger and vitriol hurled back at all of us. He was unaware how his tirades against my mom, also felt like attacks against me. He was not very self-aware, but alcoholics are usually not all that introspective. He was an asshole. He fought about money all the time, even though he was making a ton of money.
It was the principle of the thing, he would say, from time to time. It sounded just like the one time he confronted me, while I was in high school and staying at his house over Spring Break. “You may not love me,” he yelled. “But you’re damn well gonna respect me.” Sounds like a bad movie, right? The words were seared into my brain forever. I vowed never to put myself in that position with my father again. And until he was dying of cancer, and no longer able to drink, we never spent another night under the same roof.
|
In throwing everything to the Attorney General’s office she’s essentially thrown me to the wolves.
|
And I know there are vindictive fathers. And I know there are high conflict divorces. Ours was not one of those. Even in divorce we negotiated. The horror of my parent’s divorce was not going to be visited on my children, or even on my ex-wife. And as I compromised what I was asking for, 50/50 parenting, I was told that’s what I would get anyway, so I’d better just accept it and move on. Um, WHAT?
Turns out that in 2009 when we were divorcing, 80% of all divorces in Texas ended up with the dad getting non-custodial parent and the every-other-weekend SPO schedule. (Standard Possession Order, once you’ve heard of it, you’ll never forget it.) So that’s what I was handed as my option. And since we had agreed not to fight, I complied. I did not fight my then-wife in the negotiations for the custody of our children. I did not argue when the amount of child support was calculated on my previous job at Dell (who pays quite well) even though I was currently looking for my next job. I didn’t fight. I sublimated my anger and frustration into some abstract support for my children. By not fighting and providing all this money for my children, things would be a little better for them then it was for me, when I was a kid. Okay, A LOT better.
But as I’ve written over and over in this blog, things didn’t work out the way we planned. The eminent job from 3M, then HP, then Dell again, didn’t happen. The economy was tanking and a 50-ish tech marketing executive was not in high demand. So I struggled to find my footing as a provider, post-divorce. It was okay, I would catch back up. I would replace my retirement savings that I was sucking down at an alarming rate to make the child support payments, even though I didn’t have a job.
And we, the nuclear family, continued on. And my employment has had ups and downs, as has the employment of my ex-wife. But somehow, we’re still tied together in the original decree that specified an amount of child support that was in alignment with my job between 2007 and 2009, and a long way from where I am today.
But the part that is perplexing, is where my ex-y began to fear that I was going to skip out on my child support payments. Or that perhaps she needed to take more aggressive action to collect the child support, in the name of “supporting the children.” Huh?
Somewhere in her post-divorce mind she had concocted an inner-story that I was trying to screw her out of the money. I was telling her exactly what was happening with me and reassuring her about the money. Eventually, I would get the big job again, and payments would resume and repayment plans would be put in place. I was NEVER disputing the money. I was even willing to continue to go into debt to her at the Dell-salary clip, when we both knew that this was not in line with what I was making. I was trying to do what was right by my kids, first and foremost. The money was not important, in the long run. The absence of conflict was more important.
And tonight I had some hilarious conversations with my kids about the -$42,000 problem with my credit card. My son is determined to figure out what happened. I’ve told them it’s not something I can discuss with them. And we joked about my drug habit, or the cool condo I had rented downtown for when they weren’t with me. They knew I was joking. But they were also concerned or curious what had zapped my credit card with such a huge debt.
|
So she’s still mad. She will probably be mad for the rest of our kid’s lives. At least she’s not telling them all the time that she’s mad at me. And that’s the pact.
|
Eventually my kids will know what happened. That the actions of their mom, against me, for no good reason, caused me to lose my house, and now have frozen all of my financial assets. The last step I guess is jail. At that point, I suppose my mom or someone would have to pay my child support (it’s nothing near $43,000 btw, the State usually goes for triple damages as a start).
My hope is the job interview on Wednesday will finally release me from the consulting/job hunt role that I’ve been in for over a year now. I’m making a little money. But I’m looking and interviewing for jobs that would afford me a place to live AND the higher than appropriate child support payments. And perhaps, the funds to go back to the court and ask for 50/50 parenting, which is the plan we shared all along.
It’s funny, she is really asking me to be a 50/50 parent all the time, by complaining about how many appointments she has to schedule and how she’s always the one responsible to remember school requirements and such. But those are exactly the kind of things she’d be mad at me about if we were still married. I’m glad we are not. She’s still mad about them, and at the moment, she has a huge financial axe over my head. (Sorry, perhaps I was being melodramatic.)
But it’s not dramatic to say that at the moment, I am on a cash-only basis. I have no bank account. My attorney said, “They’re going to keep that account. You might as well forget that money and open another account somewhere else.”
For my ex-wife, somehow it became about the money rather than the kids. It’s certainly not about 50/50 parenting, since the SPO is more like 70 – 30. (If you account for the impossibility of taking the kids for an entire month in the summer.)
Where did my ex-wife get so adversarial that rather than support me in a difficult time, she’d rather hammer me into pulp and hope for the best. It’s like get part of something or all of nothing. Today there is nothing. In fact, now, my consulting paycheck was deposited two days ago. It’s about 2% of the amount owed, the actual amount owed.
Yes, I owe my ex-wife some money. But I have never been trying to hide it. I am working and have been working steadily the entire time. But I agreed to an amount of money based on a salary that I’ve never been able to achieve since Dell. Great. So in throwing everything to the Attorney General’s office she’s essentially thrown me to the wolves. Next is jail, I suppose. I hope it won’t get to that point, but it sure would make a good chapter, I suppose. (Dear karma, I am not asking for that to happen.)
When you get divorced there is no separation of the financial obligations you still have to support your family. If there is a huge imbalance in incomes, perhaps the wealthier party should have to pay some supportive money to the stay-at-home mom, or in our case the working mom who wants to continue to live in the upscale house in the upscale neighborhood and school district in the “best interest of the children.” Yes. But if you kill the father with unreasonable debt and legal action, what do you get then?
Nothing.
I guess I could just publish the letters between us at that time, as I was begging her to just pause and think about what she was doing. But that would be a bit morbid. But there’s a funny moment, that illustrates the ‘off’ thinking. We were meeting with an accountant who specializes in helping couples divide their money for divorce. And some how my then-wife was furious that I had bought a new (very used) car. She kept coming back to it with the accountant. “But how can he rack up this new debt and we still have to split it?”
The accountant carefully pointed out. “Your car is worth about $3,000 more than the car he just purchased. And your car will be paid off in eight months. It all works out in the math.” Still she was angry, as if I had purchased a car just to shift so of my debt onto her. Um, yeah.
I won’t break confidence about what happened with the $43,000 freak-out on my credit card, for now. When the kids are older, I’ll be happy to show them this story. It’s wrong how I have been treated. And the drama and suffering as a result of her impatience and fear, is unnecessary. But somehow she doesn’t see it the same way I do. So, even now, I’m hesitant to revisit the 50/50 parenting thing, because it will look like I’m suing their mom. That’s not what’s going to happen. But still I would do almost anything to avoid damaging her or her financial situation in any way. The same cannot be said of her and her intentions towards me.
So she’s still mad. She will probably be mad for the rest of our kid’s lives. At least she’s not telling them all the time that she’s mad at me. And that’s the pact, for now. And that’s why this blog is anonymous. God bless us, everyone.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
@theoffparent
back to The Hard Stuff
related posts:
- The Fk You That Keeps On Giving
- AG’s Office Round Two: Dead Beat Dad – 0, Bank $43,000
- The Crushing Impact of Emotional Infidelity on My Marriage
- When Did Our Halos Lose Their Sparkle? A Marriage Comes Apart
- I Was a Happily Married Man, and Now I’m Not: Tiny Hints of Doom
image: (not my ex-wife) angry friday face, lara604, creative commons usage
AG’s Office Round Two: Dead Beat Dad – 0, Bank $43,000
This post continues here: The Fk You That Keeps On Giving
This evening, after picking my kids up and having dinner at a local restaurant, I was given my credit card back with the waitress saying, “It’s been declined.” Um, what? I had just been talking to a client about their credit card number being stolen and used in Mexico in a fraud transaction, and that’s what crossed my mind when I opened the banking app to see this lovely number presented to me. I even showed it to the kids, claiming I had accidentally bought a used BMW, and just forgot to transfer the funds to cover it.
I was joking. The good news is my daughter had some cash to buy school clothes with this weekend, so we had some money. I was essentially frozen out. Nada.
Back at the house, my sister’s house where we are staying this weekend, I was told there had be a legal hold put on my account. And after a few humiliating conversations I was given the AG’s office number, where I could plead my case.
And I’m wondering, if the timing, is about concurrent with my ex-y filing her case against me. I texted her, since we’ve been talking again lately, strategizing about insurance and such, until I get my next big gig. And I let her know I didn’t think she did it, but I needed to ask. She was very happy that I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but she had not done anything else. No, the damage was done a year ago. The hurt that had rained down on me since. Let’s take a look.
On May 16, 2013 I filed this missive: Me, Deadbeat Dad? Um… about the continuing escalation from her on my inability to pay, right away.
And then things begin to get out of hand on May 21, 2013: Stinging the Hand that Feeds and again on May 22, 2013: Winning the Battle, Losing the War, and again on May 24, 2013: Reassessing the Dead Beat Dad vs. Good Guy Dad. And then we were pretty much done talking about it. She no longer took my phone calls, and refused to meet in-person about the kids or summer or whatever.
Then on Oct. 25, 2013 the result of her actions at the AG’s office came home. Since she didn’t want to talk about the money, she simply filed against me: Tell Me Again, Why You Think This Is a Good Idea? (where I talk about getting the notice from the State of Texas) and the next day Can Things Get Worse? Yes, Easy!
“You walk away from the marriage, but you can’t walk away from the financial enmeshment. Like it or not, we’re still dependant on the other’s earning power. I’ve been doing everything I can to find the next opportunity for my work. And I would tell you that I’m not worried. But again, I might have delusions of grandeur. I’ve been working on replacing this income since June.”
So in the best interest of the children she filed suit against me with the Attorney General’s Office. And over the course of the next few months I began to struggle to keep the house over my head, while continuing to look for more work, or enough work to pay her child support. On the Turning Away: Fighting with Your Ex About Money.
|
Today the near-full force of the law has come to visit me, rendering me penniless in addition to homeless.
|
And I guess the real story is this: I am still struggling to take my income up high enough that I can afford to have a place to live and pay her child support. And while we are essentially parenting at 50/50 levels, I am still the non-custodial parent. And when you call that number the AG’s office gives you, you identify as custodial or non-custodial parent. There’s no gray area in the eyes of the law.
And I’m guessing there’s little gray area in the eyes of my readers, unless you’ve been through something like this. I state as fact, that I am not hiding money, I am not trying to skip out of my responsibility, nor am I shirking my parenting duties in any way. I am 100% available to my kids and to my ex-y for support and care. I still have not managed to get the corp job that will afford us both a better life. But that’s the deal, right? Even after divorce, we are still in this financial relationship forever. Our kids are going to need cars, and rent, and tuition, and food money, and … And the ex-y and I will negotiate those things as well.
But today the near-full force of the law has come to visit me, rendering me penniless in addition to homeless. (Not to be too dramatic, we’re not under a bridge, but we’re living with my family.) And as the ex-y was contemplating her move to file against me, she was making a decision to put everything I had accomplished up to that point at risk. And in the bet I lost. I lost it all. And I am starting over again, from zero. Oh, and the amount is not indicative of how much I owe, it’s 2-3 times over the amount ordered.
|
And now she’s got me in some kind of deathgrip lean until I’m able to get in touch with my lawyer and respond.
|
Still, we will struggle on. And still I will attempt to keep the fighting to a minimum. And still I will struggle to find my next big job so I can afford to help her afford the nice house in the nice neighborhood we bought with my downpayment and salary for 11 years. No problem, it’s really the kid’s house, in my mind. Except, she’s got all the keys.
And now she’s got me in some kind of deathgrip lean until I’m able to get in touch with my lawyer and respond. Again, this is money we should not be fighting over. This is money that should not go to a lawyer, but to our kids. I made several attempts to secure the back payment with a lean against a piece of property I own, that is for sale. I am not attempting to skip a debt. But the state is now attempting to collect the debt I owe her.
What an interesting start to the new school year. I laughed and told the kids it was some weird bank thing. They don’t need to be involved or informed about what’s really taking place. Nor will they know, until they are older, that their mom’s actions cost me the house as well.
Onward and upward. It’s the first night since school started that I’ve seen them, so we’re doing homework. On June 30, 2014 I wrote this: Losing Everything In Divorce; Learning to Carry On
Here’s how our text went regarding this new development.
I guess if she’d said she was sorry, she’d be admitting that it was a mistake. Obviously she doesn’t think it’s a mistake, or the need to apologize. What am I expecting?
This post continues here: The Fk You That Keeps On Giving
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
@theoffparent
back to The Hard Stuff
related posts:
- Terms of Surrender: Our Divorce Papers
- No Divorce Expert: But If You Parent 50/50 You Should Divorce 50/50
- On the Turning Away: Fighting with Your Ex About Money
- Marriage and Money: A Fairy Tale
- I Must Be Insane: It’s the End of the World, and I Feel Fine
image: today’s bank statement
