Child and Spousal Support Should Never be Plan A

On the one hand, child support has been a blessing for millions of children who would otherwise have no support from their absent parent, and those absent parents may have high-paying jobs. Many children have been rescued from a life of absolute poverty because of child support legislation. Absent parents include women as well as men. BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE---child support legislation was not created because of nationwide love for children. It was created to give the taxpayers a break from paying for all those children on welfare. Why should a child be on welfare and/or medicaid (state-funded health insurance) if they have an absent parent who has a full-time job with health insurance?

Similarly, for many women who had been married for years, only to have their husbands leave them for mistresses, spousal support has been a godsend. These women may have put their husbands through medical or law school, or helped them start and build a business. Spousal support helps women who have been left high and dry start new lives. The spousal support is sometimes used to pay the mortgage on the marital home. Other times it's used for college or job training to lead to self-sufficiency. Sometimes, if the wife was the primary wage-earner, the ex-husband becomes the spousal support recipient., and the ex-wife has to pay.

Things get tricky when the payor of child or spousal support does not have a regular 9 to 5 job. When there is no payrolled job, the payor is responsible for sending money on his or her own. Child support agencies will attempt to find bank accounts to freeze and seize, but if this doesn't happen, the support recipient may not get support, because it is up to the payor to send support. There is nothing that the child support agencies can do, except suspend the payor's driver's license. However, driver's licenses cannot be suspended for spousal support only orders---only if there is child support involved. So having an absent parent who is a performer or NBA player is not so stable afterall!

It is important to remember that child support agencies are collection agencies only. If there is no income to attach, and the payor does not simply follow the court order and pay, the child support agency can only prepare a court packet for the case. The family court, in most cases, will do absolutely nothing. The courts cannot do anything. Imagine how much more overcrowded jails would be if everyone not paying child and spousal support were thrown in jail!

Therefore, screaming at your worker at the local child and spousal support enforcement agency is simply a waste of energy. Again, the child support worker can only assist to *collect* support. If there is no income found to collect the support, the case is turned over to the court. The reality is that the court slaps the payor on the wrist and sends him or her on his or her way. The cold, cruel reality is that no judge or prosecutor really cares that your children need clothes, or that you cannot pay your mortgage or get your medication. Also, a court order does not mean that sheriffs are going to hunt a person down for noncompliance.

Support enforcement expectations can even get to the point of ridiculous. If an absent parent is an addict, why waste time expecting support from him or her? Similarly, if an absent parent is a big-time drug dealer, there is no payroll office to garnish his or her earnings. Or, if the absent parent makes a living by shacking up with love interests, and/or has no *legal* marketable skills, why stress over not getting support? Even further down the road of ridiculous, why expect someone to be committed to paying child and spousal support if they weren't committed to a marriage or long-term relationship? Or, most ridiculous, why expect no problems receiving child support if you gave birth as the result of a consensual, drunken one-night stand or as the result of an adulterous affair?

Even people with the best intentions of paying their support experience problems and setbacks. With this economy, a person may lose his or her job and not be able to find another one quickly, thus affecting his or her ability to pay. Job losses are not limited to indefinite layoffs or plant closings, but also when payors sustain injuries or illnesses that make working impossible.

So what should be done? People need to take more responsibilities for their actions. Do you really want to look in your children's faces and tell them that they have nothing to eat, no clothes, or live in an unsafe area because their mother or father isn't paying child support? Do something to better yourself---take a class to learn a marketable skill or get a job (any job to bring income in until you can get something better). Don't wallow in guilt, anger, or self-pity over a failed relationship or a mistake in judgment. Get counseling if you cannot seem to get a grip. However, BY NO MEANS should child or spousal support be relied on as a sole source of income.


Remember that old saying that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Well, it can be applied to child and spousal support. Do not enter a marriage, long-term relationship, or sexual encounter unless you have a means of supporting yourself and any children that may result. Most of all remember that no matter how much your significant other promises to love you or never leave you, he or she can change his or her mind. We have all been given free will. No matter how many years that were invested in a relationship, no matter how many kids that the relationship produced, and even if a significant other gets stricken with a serious illness, everyone has the option to walk away. It may not be biblically and morally right, but it may happen.