that was the way it was explained to me. I thought it had to be a mistake and I too spent a lot of time on their web site tonight trying to figure it out for myself . It is disgusting. Their so called 'child support calculator' doesn't work, but nothing else on there does either. I would call the damm thing...job security for the lawyers, judges, and lawmakers! I don't think women voted it in, cause the kids get less no mater how you slice it. That is common knowlege, what is bad is I didn't realize how much less. The forms are a joke, it looks more like a tax return, but written by some 3rd grader. The verbage isn't even consistent, that is one reason for so much confusion. The real losers are the people who don't have the money to hire a lawyer to try to figure all the garbage out, and then I'm sure the opposing lawyers would never agree, much less the judge. Most poor parents are gonna just give up and walk away, and the kid will get whatever the other parent is willing to give.

Responsible parents are always going to do the right thing and I applaude you for paying and it says that you are responsible and loving parent, that your ex kept hitting you with
'Dad will pay'.

I was the responsible one too. I worked all my life and bit into someone from the West Coast who lied about their background. Everyone should have a background check on someone before they marry them. I didn't. He cleaned me out with his bussiness ventures. When your married to someone, you give in to their harping just to shut them up. About the only thing he didn't get his name on was my house. When I got rid of the slug, all I had left was a 2 year old, my house, but now with a second mortgage, a cleaned out bank account, big debts from his bussiness, and the clothes on my back. For years, my child's cloths came from 2nd hand stores, and we would go to Toys R Us for my child to play with the small riding cars. My blouses were so paper thin from wear, I never could take off my jacket at work.
He got a good lawyer who put off everything so he wouldn't pay till the end. I use to have to hand my child over to his Daddy who drove a brand new powder blue lincoln and bleached blond bimbo while he was paying nothing for child support.
2 years later, I thought I was rid of him with the divorse. I was sitting there with a child who wanted to see his Daddy, who moved to Fl to avoid child support. You love your child, so you wind up flying with your small child to Fl before you go to work and flying back at the end of the weekend to pick him up. Why? Because you are trying to mend a small child's broken heart. But you have no life except working to pay off the bills he made and trying to keep a roof over the kids head so he doesn't know you are now poor as church mouses.
My ex paid sometimes only because I threatened to take my divorse papers to Fl and file them so that the next wife's lawyer would find them.

For years I have paid the price of a dead beat, no one knows what that does to a child. How many soccer fields you have stood in hours after the game is over with a crying child who's father promised he would come watch.
My ex sang the sierns song to the 15 yr old who never had a Dad and he went to live with him. Grades droped 20 points in all subjects. My child finaly realized he was being used, but the dammage was done. Now, I'm having to go back to court though the child has been back since Aug living with me. His father is screaming at the top of his lungs that 'I gave you back your kid, that should be enough, I'm not going to pay child support.' Tell me, who loves the kid and who doesn't? No one would keep picking up the shattered pieces of a childs heart and trying to put them back together if they didn't love them. But now there is revenge in mine and I decided to make him pay his fare share, only to find, the new guidlines have fixed it so he will pay very little. I have always raised my child alone, and will continue to do so, but I'm pissed the courts let me down, and I think very few Mothers are as strong as me. They are not being done right, but the person who is hurt the most, is that child crying in a soccer field waiting for empty promisses.

"Dead Beat Dad", is a term that has no statistical basis. Its a hoax perpetrated on the American father so that public opinion sides with the mother in nearly all cases of divorce and Child custody regardless of the facts of the cases. It is a buzz phrase used to make fathers feel inferior and worthless.

The truth of the matter is that 98% of all divorced fathers pay their child support(which before income shares was grossly one sided in favor of the mother). I know you probably can't see it, but I've been the father paying. I was the one who struggled to make ends meet whiel my ex took my kids money, her money, and her new husband's money and pi$$ed it away. My children wore yard sale clothes, had not coats (until i bought them), and moved over 20 times.

So pardon me for not sharing your disgust over thenew system. It seems way overdue to me.

I don't know where you got your 98% figure, but the most recent statistics I could find were from a 2002 United States Census survey.

In 2002, 68% of men payed their child support. 32% did not. That's a pretty darn good statistical basis if you ask me.

Fox News:"Data shows that only 4.3 million moms out of 6.3 million moms owed are actually paid, leaving a startling two million deadbeat dads out there."

I'd be interested in hearing where you got your numbers.

Perhaps treating fathers as equally able to raise their children and valuing fatherhood might help make men take their fiscal responsibility more seriously.

Of course, when the courts so frequently discount the importance and value of fathers, and insist on custody for the mother, it is not surprising that nearly one-third fail to pay..... assuming of course that it is in fact the babies daddy.

Men are not just wallets.

Isn't it ironic if a woman wants to abort she can - even against the father's wishes. Yet, if she decides to have a child, even against the father's wishes, he has to pay for the child for 18 years? Is that 'equality'?

Or, require that BOTH parents pay child support to the court and see to it that the money is spent on the child and distributed based on the amount of time each parent spends with the child(ren).

with this, but I think the COMPLICATED new laws only AGGRAVATE things. No one is gonna walk away thinking the deal is fair because no one can understand it. I'm sure a lot of honest lawyers hate it, cause it is so screwed up, it will give the one not wanting to pay plenty or loopholes.

As far as treating fathers equally, the deck has always been stacked against the kids and the one trying to raise them. Only in the past 20 years has the government done anything to make them pay. Before that, I can remember men getting rid of the wives and the kids as a package and just going somewhere else and starting a new family.

One ugly story that hangs in my mind is a friend of my ex was at our home around Christmas and started crying and feeling sorry for himself. It seemed he had 5 children by 2 or 3 wives and he was crying cause he was alone. I couldn't understand why at least one of them didn't want to spend Christmas with him. It turned out, he had never bought them a Christmas or birthday present, paid support, or was around when they were little and needed him. I kicked him out of my house and told him to never come back.