Child Support & Custody in Iowa

[tzmomcats]

Hello, I am new to this forum, so forgive me if I mess up. I have some major dilemma's that I would like some advice on: First of all my husband and I have been married for 2 years and have 4 minor children between us (none of our own biological children) my youngest child is 15 and his are 17, 14, & 10. The main issue that we have right now is the amount of his child support, the amount was determined when he was earning a salary of $42,000 per year, which he has not done for the past 4 years. He pays $800 a month for his 3 children and at this point he only earns $32,000. We have both had to file bankruptcy a couple of years ago and have had several medical issues, which incurred several medical bills, his student loan has been due for quite a long time but we can never afford to make the payments.....to make a long story short we barely make enough to survive but are still paying this exhorbatent amount of support. We have no money to hire an attorney so we seem to be pretty much stuck.

The next dilemma is his 17 year old moved out of her mom's house about a year ago and moved in with her grandma (my hubby's mom) (btw, they live 3-1/2 hours away from us) she moved because she got tired of having to care for the younger siblings while mommy dearest went out and got drunk every night, plus she had an aversion to mommy's alcoholic, loser boyfriend. Anyway, we have heard from the kids on several occasions that mom has left them alone at night while she went out drinking, or didn't even bother to come home at all, that mom doesn't ever buy groceries, she fixed supper for her and her bf and the youngest asked if she could have a piece of garlic bread and mom screamed at her and said this is OUR supper!! We contacted Iowa DHS and they did an investigation.......some investigation! They interviewed mom and the kids and sent a report to us stating that the kids were fine, they said that everything was ok at home they had no complaints. Come to find out, they had interviewed the kids with mom in the room!!! What did they expect the kids to say while mom is sitting there listening to them? She has verbally and emotionally abused these children telling them that if they say anything to their dad or grandma or anyone that they will be taken from their home and separated and placed in foster homes!! We have tried to tell them that that is not what would happen, that they would come and live with us, but they are absolutely terrified! They are wonderful kids and do not deserve to be treated and neglected this way!! But we don't have the money or the means to do anything about it, we tried going through our state agency and see how far that got us!!

Mom continues to go out drinking and we found out this weekend that her and loser bf got married! Oh, we also got (for the 8th or 9th time) a letter in the mail from the mortgage company stating that the house payment is behind by 2 payments.....AGAIN! That's another thing, she was supposed to sell the house, or refinance the house when they got divorced and give my husband his half of the proceeds and that hasn't happened, she had it up for sale, but never cleaned it or took care of the yard or anything so of course it didn't sell, and again no money, no attorney........so my hubby's name and credit is even more in the dirt because of this. We send her $800 a month and the house payment is $400+(something) and she can't even pay that! Gee I wonder what she's doing with the money???? I could go on and on about things, but this is long enough as it is.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how we can help the kids and ourselves before it's too late? I would really appreciate any advice. I am becoming very fed up with things and yet I don't know what to do about it or where to turn?