Still Struggling...
by Kathi Berry
(Mt. Pleasant, Iowa USA)
The system has taken advantage of my economic background and hardships to continue collecting money having hearings without my knowledge, and many more injustices. I had two children by my first husband, who cheated on me, and I left, we were doing well financially, and he got everything, I got $18,000, had the lawyers, and took my children.
I was young and had a third child, and continued to pay full support for my children from the first marraige, and raise my new child on my own. I got married again to an abusive man this time, and had two more girls.
So now I was paying half of everthing I made, and all my income tax returns to child support for the first two, while raising my other three, alone, on the other half, worked two jobs and went to school. My second husband tried to kill me, they took my daughter away and gave her to the deadbeat dad that was never around all her life, I now paid child support for three kids, half of my income, and continued to raise the other two, alone.
I have never had one income tax return, always had two or three jobs, had cancer, and have always paid half my income to child support, and raised my last two alone. At the age of 15 my oldest child moved back in with me, I had no money to get a lawyer, so they made me pay his father the child support anyway, my son and my other two children lived with me, I raised them alone, keep in mind my two youngests father was in prison, no support to me there, and my son's father was not paying, I was paying him, current and back. Now all three older kids are 18, still no support from my youngest two's father, I just paid all my tax return, 6,000 dollars, and all my back unemployment, of 2700 dollars.
now my unemployment from being injured, is 260 a week, and they take all but 120 dollars, thats what my other daughters and I live off of. I am taking 24 hours, to graduate this semester, I am determined to fight the system, my younger two daughters live in poverty, while the other three are grown and out of the house. My ex husband and his wife,take cruises with the child support and brag about it, and we live in a small town where I am a Pastor now, and still raising my other two. I have always had constant contact with my children minus the five years I had to leave the state to avoid my crazy ex husband, who still wanted to kill me.
And even then, I drove home and risked our lives, to see them at least once a month, every holiday and Birthdays, and talked to them on the phone a lot. I kept them four weeks every summer. This is wrong, how the system just takes what they want, there are court orders being entered without my knowledge, I get the Final Judgement in the mail, with no way to defend my position.
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