Messages

I may have forgotten to mention and can't find where I did. My son would have difficulty raising the baby on the kind of wages he makes. I will be taking guardianship of the baby. My son will likely stay here to learn to care for the baby and bond with him. I live alone, own my own 3 bd, 2 bath home and am on a combination of disability and widows pensions. I lost my husband 7 months ago. I am an amputee. I use a wheelchair at home but have a prosthetic leg to wear to drive myself anywhere I need to go. I have a housekeeper once a week and a handyman who comes as needed. I take care of the house the rest of the week. My housekeeper takes care of anything that is hard for me. ie I have vinyl floors. I use a steam mop for spot cleaning. She gives them a good scrubbing once a week.

The ex-gf is not married. She is 33 and lives with her mother and stepfather along with her previous child who is drug affected.


I encouraged my son to go along with adoption but at that time, they were going through an agency.  I have concerns about this family (father, mother & her 3 boys). She called me one day out of the blue. I asked her if she had other children. She told me that she did but her husband didn't and she wanted him to have the experience of raising a baby. That put up my red flags. It is not the best reason to adopt. She is a real estate saleswoman. I have worked for realtors and I know they will say what is necessary to make the sale. They are friends of the girl's neighbors and knew her slightly. I know that they are expected a rosy cheeked cherub but are getting a child affected by meth and other drugs.


My son is adopted and all I knew (which told me a lot) was that his birth mother was a hooker/stripper. I expected problems and began to seek treatment early.


Thanks for the info about getting legal aid to help us with the first case and then stall the second case. I'll sit down with him this weekend, present his options and then let him think about it.

I think we are just going to have to give up.


He is basically barred from the hearing since they have set him up for arrest. He was in the wrong. I just don't have the money pay him out like her parents did. They have a program where you pay a percentage of your bond and then you're done except for probation. If I don't pay him out, he could go to jail for years and I'm 62.


There are an unbelievable number of legal ways that a father's rights can be taken from him involuntarily. The only way to get them would involve a LOT of money and time. When I told my son what I'd learned, he cried and hugged me and told me he would find a better girl and make me another grandson.

The girl and her family would have given the baby to anyone but us because they hate my son so much. I keep reminding myself that you can't get something good out of hurting someone.

My son's ex-gf is due any time. He has told her many times that he won't consent and he wants the baby. He has a minimum wage job and has an efficiency apartment. He and I planned for me to take guardianship while he learns to support and care for the baby. I am a 62 year old recent widow on disability.


He has been served with documents for the hearing to dispense with his right to consent and for a waiver of interlocutory decree and the 6 months waiting period to adopt. The reason to remove his rights is listed as a mental illness or deficiency. He has not be evaluated and has never had a diagnosis. He is dyslexic.


Adoptive mother has called me twice to talk me into making him sign. The first time, she was ultra-sweet and talked about how we would all be a part of the baby's life to enrich it[size=78%]. [/size]She is a real estate saleswoman after all. Next time, she spent more time telling me what a horrible person my son was. She even said losing his child was his consequence for not using birth control and leading a bad life. Her husband is a detective and has set it up so if my son goes to the hearing, he will be arrested on an old warrant before he can go into the court room.

I keep searching for anything that would help him and it appears that biological fathers have no rights in adoption. I was aware they didn't have any in abortion but I had always thought adoption was different.

My DH's ex always scheduled a full agenda of fun things (parties, swimming, fishing, cookouts, etc) during our visitation. It would take us all year to save the money to go spend a few days with them and our old car typically broke down several times during the trip. They lived 4 states away which took about 15 hours driving one way and DH does not have paid vacations. We were lucky to be able to take them for a meal during 4 days of being there. BM kept telling us that she wanted us to be one big happy family but we didn't want to spend 4 days sitting in her living room being glared at by her DH while the kids were off with their friends. The kids barely spoke to us when they were there. He didn't want to be a mean dad and take them away from all these fun activities.

The kids are all emancipated now but the damage was done. I am on very friendly texting terms with the fiancee of the 25 year old. She wants to move here because there are more opportunities but they are living with Mommy and he won't leave. She's even tried to get him to visit us and he won't.

Although the CO says he gets regular visitation, we can't see them if we go and they have never been allowed to come to our home. They have even passed, numerous times, within a few miles of our home on the way to drop them off at a family member's house so BM and her DH could go on their annual month in the Bahamas but we couldn't have them at our house.

Thanks so much for the information. I'll pass it on to DH.

He's very depressed right now.  The child support plus arrearages has been coming from his checks by  payroll deduction and DCSE has left it that way.  There's little work in his company right now and he doesn't get paid when he doesn't work. Hopefully it will pick up. In the meantime, 2 weeks ago, he had no hours. Last week he had 20. This week he had 6. $151 comes off the top for the payment to DCSE. We are behind a month in the mortgage. I have 10 specialists that I have to see and they are all wanting money on the copays that we don't have. I keep asking them for cheaper medications because the copays are high even with discount cards from the manufacturer. We know that DCSE is not concerned with my disabilities but my health is so poor that I can't earn any additional money to help and I've had my heart stop several times in the last 4 months because of medication issues. That makes me feel guilty because I'm costing DH so much.

The system in Virginia seems to be very strange. It cost us nearly $3,000 a couple of years ago to have one of DH's sons removed from child support when the kid was in the Marine Corps and we could document it. He should have been automatically removed. So for several months DH was paying child support for a Marine. He was not allowed to have a refund or to have that amount taken from arrearages. It just went to his ex-wife.

He applied for a telephone hearing once but the judge, even after approving his attendance by phone, refused to allow him to speak. Documentation was provided ahead of time for the hearing.

DH was divorced in Fredericksburg area in VA. BM still resides there. We are in Oklahoma. DH is 62. He is still working but will not be able to work much longer due to the nature of his job. I am 60 and disabled. I receive SSDI.

I need to give some background but will make it brief as possible. Some comes from DH, some from reports and documents.

DH was afraid BM was, once again, setting him up. She also physically abused him frequently. So he called the police asking for a mediator and went out front to wait. He was arrested. She told him to plead guilty and to cash out his retirement fund and give it to her or he would never see his kids again. He did as told. She denied receiving the $17K in cash when they went to court.

They divorced. In VA, he had worked 2 full time jobs during the last years of their marriage. BM provided his total income during that period but not the info that it was 2 FT jobs. In TN, prevailing wage for his job skill was $13/hour. In VA it was $25. Judge ordered him to pay child support based on $17/hour at 75% from the child support guideline charts. He was devastated and depressed during the separation and divorce so he left VA and moved to TN. He ended up in a VA homeless shelter for part of a year and lived under a bridge part of the year. This put him in arrears for child support so he was arrested and sent to VA to jail.

After 3 months in jail, he signed a contract with DCSE saying he would pay current support, $100/month on arrearages and provide insurance. We have been married almost 10 years and arrearages continue to increase due to interest rates. He has been paying every month during this time.

Last child has now reached 19. He received a letter from DCSE saying he was done with child support ($555 plus $100 on arrearages) for her. Then they sent another letter saying that he was being required to send $655/month until all arrearages, fees and interest are paid off. When we married, arrearages were about $26K. Now they are close to $35K. About $16K is arrearages. The rest is interest.

We have had a tough time dealing with DCSE. The case manager has not returned a call in 3 years. DH just gets a cryptic note from her in response to a faxed letter to her.  Most of the time the notes are unsigned. We have difficulty having customer service reps in the call center making decisions with legal ramifications. They just tell us to hire an attorney to answer our questions. The questions we are asking should be answered by DCSE -- ie our most recent unanswered questions are "what is the APR on this alleged debt" and "how many payments do you estimate the debt will take to pay". We have also asked for a copy of the contract DH signed in their office. He says they did not give him a copy at the time. Now they say that was only to get his driver's license back although they have said it was a court order for payment of arrearages at $100/month.

Since I am now on disability, we don't have the disposable income to hire a lawyer at a $1500 retainer.

Other issues we have had were when we tried to get school, medical and counseling records on the 3 children. We used a letter template from this site and were denied. The superintendent called BM who said DH had "given her the children" and if she or her DH wanted him to have information, they would give it to him. At that, the superintendent denied all information. DH has also been denied visitation. Last year, DH was offered one day visitation IF he paid for his daughter's round trip airfare and we drove 250 miles to pick her up since BM was going to be with her visiting family. They would not allow us to even pay the extra to have her flown here. We declined that visitation saying that one day after 10 years of denial was too short for the $600 it would have cost us.

We are wondering why they can arbitrarily decide to continue our payments at the same monthly rate (more than our mortgage) and why they will not provide us with documentation, APR or estimate of number of payments. Their only response is "get a lawyer". We would if we could but right now we are behind in our mortgage due to this unexpected $655/month payment. We only expected to pay $100/month since that was in the contract.

An additional question we have is what happens if DH dies. Does the obligation still end or do I have to pay it from his estate. There will be very little estate. There will be very little money during retirement because DH gave BM his entire retirement fund with the intention of paying off the child support arrearages 12 years ago.

Children and BM live in Virginia. Husband (NCP) and I have been living in SC. CS is $896 for 3 kids plus we pay for medical/dental insurance. Because insurance is under my employer, BM refuses to use it since it is not in husband's name. CS was a flat rate.

Last November, we went to court to request a reduction in child support. Oldest child was 20 and in the Marine Corps at that time. Next child was a senior in high school, good grades, and on delayed entry to Marine Corps for this June. Third child was nearly 15.

We had to choose an attorney from the phone book. I felt he was hostile towards us. I have worked for and with many attorneys but never saw this hostility before. Perhaps he just didn't have a good personality.

We asked that CS be reduced for the oldest and we requested that the order make allowance for the next child to be dropped IF he graduated. Our attorney said that couldn't be done and we would have to go back to court in the spring to request that he be removed. I don't understand why this couldn't be done. We had to pay $1000 for the lawyer and he said we had to attend the hearing. This meant my husband had to take 3 days of unpaid leave, we had to travel 1000 miles round trip with the costs of motels, gas, food, etc. All total it cost us nearly $3000. We came out ordered to continue to pay the same amount for 2 children that we had been paying for 3. It took our entire savings to do this plus we had to borrow some of it.

My husband has not been able to work in our town because he can't earn enough to pay the CS. He has had to work 200 miles away. He has living expenses to work there because he lives in a campground in a small camper. Our attorney said we could not claim that as part of our living expenses because it was a "lifestyle choice". We didn't consider it a lifestyle choice but a necessity.

The attorney says we may be able to get a reduction to $500 for the remaining child if we go back to court. Of course, this means another $3000, which we don't have.

I recently accepted a job in Oklahoma. We are trying to save the money to move my husband here. We have no way to absorb another $3000. it will be several months before we can. Our attorney says they will not make it retroactive so we can't get back any of the extra money if it is reduced.

Is there any way we can apply for a reduction without incurring so much expense? We don't even know if they would reduce the CS even if we paid the money and went.

We pay CS through Child Support Enforcement but they only provide an attorney to BM. (BTW she lied about her income but our attorney says we can't do anything about that.)

I know it doesn't have anything to do with CS but BM has never allowed us to have the children more than an hour and she's always around when we see them. My husband is supposed to have "reasonable visitation" but this is what she considers reasonable.

I'd love any feedback and ideas.

I may have done something wrong with the PM's. It looks to me like I enabled them.

He is filing an appeal. It took 3 phone calls to the court to get them to send the form to us. They kept giving us the website but we couldn't figure out which form since none of them appeared to be what we needed. Finally, DH called and got the clerk on the phone to pull the case, find the correct form and fax it. Even then, the form barely seems to fit the case but I guess it was the closest one.

We have 10 days to have the form in their office -- calendar days NOT business days. They agreed to accept it by fax if we had his signature notarized by someone who has an ink stamp instead of an embosser.

DH told me that BM told the judge that both she and the daughter were going to be put on the policy but (approximate amounts here) that it was about $100/month to add BM and $300/month to add the one child, who is healthy to our knowledge. I've been in administration for years. I have friends who are HR specialists and no one has ever heard of a case where the spouse coverage was the lowest. She offered no proof - only her sworn statement.

The judge also admitted that this was out of the normal realm of this particular court.

It is 1800 miles one way - a full day's flight (Oklahoma City to Washington DC). DH does not get paid leave and it's a day's flight each way plus the day for court. So, adding up the flight, 2 nights in a hotel, rental car, and lost wages, it's expensive not even counting the attorney.

My DH has tried his best to turn his kids around but they just keep getting worse and worse. I bought Divorce Poison and actually got him to read parts of it. Well, he prefers that I read to him then we discuss it. It has helped him to see that it wasn't HIM.

With only 10 days to file an appeal, we have no way to get the money for an attorney so we can't go that route. And we have to come up with an additional $300 to send March 1 for the insurance premium on the third policy. Child support enforcement folks are on her side, not ours. To do what they want so that we can request a reduction in child support due to the health insurance premium, it will take nearly a year.

We are totally frustrated with the Child Enforcement Dept in Virginia. When you call, you only get a call center. The operators insist on answering your questions and making decisions but we aren't happy with having to trust the decisions they make.  If you want your case manager to call, it will be 7-10 business days IF they call back at all. Usually they don't call back. We have managed to get through to DH's case manager by sending a fax directed to the case manager. That way we were getting a response within about 2 days. Now, however, that avenue has been closed. The case manager supervisor called and was chilly to the point of rudeness. We are to deal with her. Actually, she says only DH can deal with her now although he has filed the proper paperwork there for them to discuss the case with me and accept letters from me. We set this up because DH travels extensively to find work and I have the printer, fax machine and full access to a phone. So apparently DH and I are no longer allowed to talk to the case manager.

We are really uncomfortable sending BM a monthly check for $292.50. At least we have some protection sending the child support through DCSE. BM has tried to get DH to drop the insurance coverage before stating to him that she had the kids on Medicaid. He contacted the case manager who told him that no, the kids were NOT on Medicaid and DH was responsible for insurance or would go to jail. BM has proven before that she would rather DH go to jail than have the insurance.