Don't confuse the words Justice and Fair.

by James C
(Denham Springs, La)

I have fathered four children. My first wife is deceased and I married another woman with whom I had a child. After the birth of my youngest child, and prior to her learning to crawl, that second wife got bored with our relationship and left. She had an affair with another man while she was gone but eventually returned.

In the interest of making the relationship work I vowed to put it behind us and move on. For the next year and a half she repeatedly left and returned, and over the course of a two year marriage we spent more time apart than together. Finally enough was enough. After our divorce, we eventually found ourselves in court regarding child support, where the Louisiana Support Enforcement Services agencies representative used the Federal Guidelines to determine the amount of child support I should pay.

In making those calculations the assumption was made that there was one child in this equation. Why, you may ask, was that assumption made? Simple, Since there was no court ordered child support with my first three children being the subject (the children whose mother is no longer alive and I am the sole surviving parent) they could not be considered when calculating the child support due my ex-wife.

Perhaps it is just me, but I happen to think that as the sole surviving parent there is an implied court order that I support those children because if I do not they will charge me with abandonment, but that whole thing is another fight for another day.

Make no mistake about it folks, the state and Federal agencies claim this is money owed to your child, and perhaps in a perfect world that is true. It leaves me to wonder then, why it is paid to an ex-spouse and that person is left to spend those funds as they wish with no requirement that a single dime of it be accounted for.

In my case, the few times that I have been able to see my child She usually shows up with home made hair cuts because her mother is too cheap that take the girl and get her a hair do, she has often been found wearing her older step-brother’s second hand jacket because “mom couldn’t fine a coat that would fit me”, and even his old shoes.

The icing on the cake is that when we first split up we lived in Tallahassee Florida. Over the years I was transferred by work to Kentucky, back to Tampa Florida, and eventually found my way to Denham Springs Louisiana where my daughter had been moved to. She has since be relocated to Kentwood Louisiana, which I suppose is a drivable distance except that she is not allowed to call me, does not get my messages, and if I show up at a ball park during one of her games her mother will keep her so busy running back and forth for this or that she cannot spend a moment with me. That mother gives me dirty looks, prevents her daughter from seeing me and yet all the while has no problem accepting or spending the $600 a month in child support that she not only receives but is and for a long time has been paid up a month and a half in advance.

Support Enforcement Services over the past 12 years has demonstrated no interest whatsoever in the fact that I am not permitted visitation with my daughter, and the public defender that “represented” me, when presented with the fact that I had children from a previous marriage that were not being considered, so eloquently declared “well you chose to have those kids”.

They railroaded me, they continue to do so even today, and they enable my ex-wife to deprive me of my child. If she had to let me see my daughter in order to collect that child support I bet her attitude would get adjusted quickly.

I have had to make do, and so have my other kids over all those years, and all the while the money being sent to my ex-wife “supposedly for my daughter” has been squandered on meals out, entertaining boyfriends, and paying for really cool things like karate lessons for her step-brother. Seldom has my daughter benefitted from a dime of my child support.

It may start out as child support. The reality is that it becomes the fine that the court charges stupid men for getting involved with manipulative and deceitful women and nothing more.