Change On Federal Benefits Payments Could Leave Child Support Debtors With No Income

[On the Road]

22. I am a Landlord in Baltimore

and see this all the time. I had a tenant who had a decent job as a long-distance truck driver. He had FOUR child support payments. Stupid on his part perhaps, but he couldn't make ends meet. I had to evict him and I think his truck got repossessed.

I had a handyman who worked under the table due to child support. He got a real job at a dollar store and when the state found out about it, 90% of his wages were garnished. He basically went off the grid, living in the back of someone else's apartment until the police picked him up for riding a moped without a helmet.

The current system seems to have been designed with a certain kind of situation in mind. Perhaps it was a divorce in which the husband was the primary breadwinner and earned enough to pay child support and pay the rest of his bills. The current situation often leaves the mother better off financially and the man trying to live on half of poverty wages. It is very, very common and is not restricted to jerks and other irresponsible men.