The Real Welfare Queen

[haele]

27. Not necissarily - if she was in the system twenty years or thirty years ago, things have changed -

And pretty drastically. I have a feeling that a 50 year old who's husband doesn't have to pay alimony any more won't be able to get much assistance at all - except for maybe job search assistance. If she does manage to get welfare, she'll find the hundred and change a month that most states give out as short-term/emergancy welfare gives out won't cover gas in the tank for a month. She's not going to qualify for long-term welfare. She might get food stamps. And have to wait 45 days or so to qualify for whatever indigent health care might be available for her.
Even if there were kids involved (and it sounds like there aren't any school-aged kids left for her to care for, or she'd still be getting alimony), she'd be lucky to see anything close to $1K cash or vouchers a month - and that would be in the more generous states. She's going to have to start selling things and start working until she's old enough for SSI.

As a side, The kidlet's baby-daddy's mother thought it would be perfectly all right for the kidlet to go on assistance because he doesn't have steady work and is pretty much unemployable in this economy (under 20, high school grad = armwrestle with un-employed IT workers for the few job openings at Micky D's or the Dollar Store). Back when "gramma" was a teenaged single mother, it was apparently pretty quick and easy - even if she was living at home with her parents. And the state didn't much care where the father was back then, either. It's soooo different now.

Haele