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My personal experience with child support. My experience with child support Child Support Child support is and continues to be one of the biggest arguments in society today. It’s hard to gain a truly unbiased opinion about it. Whether you’ve been scorned by the system or benefited from it, it’s always a point of contention when brought up. The best way I can explain the process to you is by describing my own experience with the system. The Beginning Let’s start from the top. It’s the typical American story. I was married for several years to a high school sweetheart. I’d say we got married too young and tried too long to make it work. Either way we had two beautiful children. About a year after my son was born I decided I was tired of being unhappy and I wanted to move on with my life. Due to this decision it became difficult for me to see my children. My wife at the time was upset and lashed out in the best way she knew how. It was because of this I paid thousands of dollars taking her to court trying to gain custody of my kids but ultimately having to settle for shared custody. The system calls it shared custody, but it’s not REALLY shared custody. It’s really more like visitation as I am considered the non-custodial parent.  A noncustodial parent is a parent who does not have physical and/or legal custody of his/her child by court order. You can be considered a non-custodial parent even while having shared physical and/or legal custody. The Set-up It is a parent’s responsibility to make sure their children are taken care of. That’s physically, financially, emotionally, anything you can think of. Nobody has to tell you that. Nobody needs to make you aware of it. Imagine my surprise when I get a notice for a child support hearing in the mail. I’m not sure why it surprised me because it was just the next step in lashing out since my children could no longer be kept from me. It made me angry because I sent whatever money was needed on top of sending diapers, wipes, presents, etc. One of our blowups that led me to deciding to get a divorce happened while I was deployed. I gave my children’s mother $2100.00 in a 3 week period for her to ask me for $1000.00 more in the 4th week. I already know what you’re thinking. “Well, she had rent, childcare, food, clothes, etc. to pay for”. Believe me when I tell you that she was living with her parents rent free, as well as her parents were watching the kids for free if she needed. When I asked where all the money was going she got upset. From that point she said $500.00 minimum, and send anything else the kids need. I thought that was too low. She told me that’s all she needed. I sent $1000.00 the next month and she transferred $400.00 right back to my account. She told me if she needed more then she would ask. Sounds unbelievable right? It’s not. I’ll be honest. It was bit of a relief because it finally allowed me to save some serious money because I had been giving her whatever she asked for. Now this agreement happened a couple months before I decided to move on and I figured we were mature enough to communicate in regards to the children. WRONG. After getting the child support notice in the mail I started thinking, “Damn now I have to pay for another lawyer? Shit”. I started trying to figure out my next move. One thing I thought about was getting all my bank records together to show how much I had been paying as well as all the receipts from the items I bought for the children. This was to include the cell phone I had to get my daughter (who was 7 at the time) just so that I could maintain contact with her. There was no way anybody was going to paint me as a deadbeat dad in court. I was determined that was not going to happen. I got all my financials together. After that I started looking up child support calculators to give me an idea on what exactly I was in for. To my surprise based off the amount of money alone that I was giving her already I was almost $5,000 ahead so technically I didn’t have to pay another dime for about 5 months. After finding that out I contacted her asking how much she needed. I asked what did the kids need etc. She wouldn’t respond. This was when I decided to talk to a lawyer. The lawyer listened to me and looked over my documents. Unfortunately he gave me some bad news. He told me while it does look good that I’ve done all of this it will not count in my favor in the way I want it to. Everything I’ve paid along with anything else I pay before the court date will be considered as a gift. He informed me that it didn’t hurt me of course and that’s about as positive as it gets. At this point it was my choice of if I would continue to pay until the court date or stop. I made the decision to stop after thinking about it intensely. The court date was about three months away. I carefully planned how I would go about this. At the time I was residing in Louisiana and she was in Virginia. The child support calculators for the two were almost spot on the same. It was a difference of $10.00. My thought process was it’s as much her responsibility to make sure our kids are taken care of as it is mine. Meaning, if I’ve given you thousands of dollars more than what you need you are not exempt from being responsible with the money just because you didn’t think the gravy train was going to stop. Why am I looked at in a bad light because of that? I gave you the money and you blew it.  Still I decided I would reach out one more time making sure she knew whatever she needed for the kids to let me know. I advised her that due to the upcoming court appearance if she didn’t say anything I wasn’t sending anything. I didn’t make her aware of all the groundwork I already did though. Of course she didn’t respond. Big surprise? Nope. Now since I’m in the Air Force situations like these affect me different than my civilian counterparts. My next move was to present all this data to my leadership. I wanted to make sure I stayed one step ahead of her because at this point I assumed anything she could do, she would do. A month later I still had no contact with my ex-wife. I walk into work one day and my superintendent pulls me to the side. She tells me, “Hey, your wife called and said you haven’t sent money for months. She said that she’s struggling to make ends meet and you’re out buying new cars, etc.” It had only been a month. Her calling and trying to get me in trouble with my leadership didn’t surprise me. I planned for that. As much that had happened I honestly was amazed that she would flat out lie on me though. To me it was an insult to my intelligence, like did you not think I had proof on what I’ve given you? Struggling to make ends meet? At your parents house? Rent free? Food is free. Come on. My leaderships response to her was, “I’m sorry Mrs. Pittman but unfortunately for you Sgt Pittman informed us about this a month ago. He doesn’t owe you anything. He’s actually ahead. Furthermore you’ve already petitioned the court so this is no longer a military matter. It’s a civilian matter”. Boom! My first win in this process. Things were looking up and I was confident I would come out on top at the end of this ordeal. Calculating Child Support For anyone receiving child support or paying child support you will be given a case worker. About a week before my court date for child support I had to go to the office and meet mine. I hated it. You check in at the counter and despite how I was dressed compared to others I still got that, “You ain’t shit” vibe. This wasn’t a place where I felt I ever needed to be.  It was there where my caseworker would collect my financial documents and calculate how much I would have to pay monthly. Don’t be like me. I made the mistake of giving her my LES which details ALL of my pay instead of my income taxes that show my consistent pay. What I mean by that is in the military we have base pay and we have allowances. Allowances change. They may go up, down, or be taken away completely. It all depends. Your base pay can only go up. It will only go down if you get demoted which in that case is your own fault probably. If you haven’t figured it out yet the reason why they shouldn’t include the allowances is because they aren’t consistent. You could be getting a sum of $2000.00 (for example) in allowances which are usually to offset the cost of your location. Then when you get stationed somewhere else, you may not get even half of that. The military may do a survey and then decrease the pay the next year or cancel it outright. This is why allowances should not be counted. Anyway, I got called back to the office. At the time I was working two jobs. I had extra time so when I wasn’t doing Air Force business I was waiting tables at Fridays. Just trying to set myself up good financially. Apparently they only knew I worked at Fridays so when I told her I was in the Air Force she literally said, “Ooh!” I’m in shock, like, “You’re excited that I have a better job than you thought?” You shouldn’t be this emotionally invested. I knew I was about to get screwed. Remember those child support calculators I used? They were spot on. The way these things work is they compare the Custodial parents income VS Noncustodial parents income. They take in account on both sides expenses such as spousal support, child support for other kids, daycare, healthcare, and if you’re child does something different like go to a private school or something. They weigh all this data. This is the point where I want to dispel a myth. Child support does not favor any gender. It SEEMS this way because custody cases for children ABSOLUTELY favors mothers. That is where the misconception arises. There is an inordinate amount of mother’s vs father’s that have custody of the children. In my opinion this is where the myth that child support was out to nail men came from. It’s no secret that the custodial parent basically controls the relationship. Depending on the relationship between the two parents the noncustodial one may just feel the weight piling on. Anybody ever heard of the guy that pays $100.00 or less in child support complaining? Even the one that’s paying less than $300.00? Child support didn’t screw them. Child support screwed the custodial parent in that situation most likely. What I found out is child support doesn’t care who is who.  The system is flawed and is designed to put the parent who makes the MOST at the disadvantage. Whoever makes the most income ON PAPER has to pick up the others slack. That’s why instances vary. Some men that complain do have a valid argument. Just as valid as the women that are getting paid $100.00. In my scenario I was made a substantial chunk of the income. Specifically my $4690.00 to her $1100.00 which put me on the hook for $900.00 monthly. No biggie. I’m good with that. Then she drops a bomb. “It says here she has an expense of $500.00 monthly for daycare which brings your payment up to $1400.00. I was floored. We were married. I’ve been around. It never cost me $1400.00 a month. Yea you can figure in rent but where does the other parents responsibility start? My opinion is that if you needed that much in assistance then the kids should be with me. Somebody that has the means to support them. Luckily I already had health insurance on them or they would have figured that cost in there as well. I had never accounted for that much. It seemed unbelievable. I left pissed, went home and got ready to fight in court later that week. Epic Fight in Court That epic fight wasn’t so epic. It was pretty straightforward. The judge didn’t really want to listen to anything I had to say. In his defense though it really wasn’t his fault. His hands were tied. See, a lot of people think the judge just has freedom to do whatever he wants. This is the furthest thing from the truth. He has to abide by the laws. He can use his judgement and make small deviations within reason but overall his hands are tied. I read the laws beforehand and understood them. The laws are honestly just messed up. None of the people actually stuck it to me. It was honestly the standard. My only issue throughout the whole proceeding was that they verified all of my info and didn’t do the same for hers. There was no proof she paid $500.00 monthly for childcare. I knew it was a friend of the family keeping my son but the judge responded, “That about the standard rate so I’ll allow it”. He had to re-adjust her income because it had her making under minimum wage. Obviously that’s a red flag but they allowed that. The judge did account for the amount of time the custody agreement said I would have the kids knocking it from $1400.00 down to $1374.00. Yea, I know right? Then it went up to $1456.00 because guess what? Louisiana charges you a fee monthly for them handling your child support. It doesn’t get any better than that. Make me do something and then charge me for it.  At the end to add insult to injury the judge says, “Unfortunately Mr. Pittman you make pretty good money. That’s why you have to pay so much”. Thanks judge for telling me, “You fucked yourself for being successful”. Payment issues When you pay child support, by law they are only allowed to take out a certain percentage. In my example the child support order was over $1400.00. The money is taken out automatically. I have no control over it. My payments were varying between $1156.00 and $1231.00 on most months. Obviously that’s less than the court order. Common sense would say if there is a court order for a certain amount but legally you can’t take out over a certain percentage then that court order is not valid. It can’t be enforced. What is the point in the law if you’re going to still hold the person accountable for it? Well that’s what happened to me. My situation was unique. See my kids and my ex reside in Virginia. I was stationed in Louisiana. In my instance Virginia asked Louisiana to enforce the court order. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I would get notices from Virginia and Louisiana on the same case with different dollar amounts of how much I paid and how much was owed. One year in January I got a refund back from Virginia child support for overpaying. Meanwhile a week later Louisiana sends me a letter a week later saying I owe a couple thousand. How? This is the same case. You two are supposed to be teammates meanwhile one is sending me a check and the other is saying I owe? You want to know what’s crazier? Louisiana took ALL of my taxes that year. To add insult to injury as the non-custodial parent you aren’t allowed to claim the kids on your taxes without the custodial parents permission. Yes, that means I make the money give it to my ex every month, get taxed on it and don’t even get to claim the kids around income tax time. It’s the ultimate hustle. Making Progress About two weeks ago I decided to give both offices a call after receiving letters from them again that differed in dollar amounts. I’ve had enough and considering I don’t reside in Louisiana anymore I figured I should be able to eliminate them from the situation. For almost a month I’ve been practicing positive thinking. Instead of me expecting things to go wrong I do the opposite. Even if things go wrong I don’t dwell on it. I still keep a positive mindset. After about three years I finally got some positive responses as well as acknowledgment that I shouldn’t be paying as much as I am. I asked for Louisiana to be taken off the case and it’s presently in the works. Nothing has changed as of yet but I’ll be checking back in this week. If I don’t see any progress my next move is to head back to a lawyer for some advice and possible representation. Reason I just wanted to share this experience of mine because I’ve seen a lot of back and forth between people as to who pays what. Who does what. Etc. I think it’s a shame that at one time we can be on one accord and it turns into situations like this. Look, I get it. Everything doesn’t always work out. People’s feelings get hurt and they want revenge etc. Nobody should ever have to let a court decide when parents can see their kids or how much they have to pay to take care of them. There are some extreme cases where there is no choice. From what I’ve seen for the most part is just people being wrapped up in their feelings. You have to take a step back, absorb, and realize it’s not about you. It’s about the kids growing up in a healthy environment. Overall this is a story that I’ve held inside for a few years. I’ve only shared it with close family and a friend or two. If you have any questions or need any clarification on anything feel free to contact me. It’s all about education. Enjoy your life to the FULLEST.