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

[Monk06]

68. I hear your pain brother. When my wife divorced me I negotiated a 50% no fault settlement with my

exwife. I got 50% of the equity in the house that I bought six months before she kicked me out. I converted that equity into cash to pay for child support for ten years.

Her response was to deny me access to my two sons by sending them to psychiatrists claiming my visits were upsetting them. This after she called the police on me twice claiming I was trying to break into her house when I was just standing on the porch waiting for my sons so I could take them to the park for the only two hours she would allow me to see them each week.

I finally gave up trying to see my sons for their sake. I figured it wasn't worth trying to maintain my visitation rights at the expense of their mental health.

Years later I contacted them through an email I found on the internet. I found out that my exwife told them I died in a car accident in 1990. They were more than surprised that I wasn't dead. My older son, who was close to his mother didn't want to begin a relationship after 30 years. My younger son who was searching for me did. We have been corresponding for five years now. My younger son got married this summer. My exwife threatened to ruin their wedding if I was invited. So I was not invited.

I didn't have a problem with that because I was more interested in his and his future wife's happiness than doing battle with his mother who couldn't get beyond her anger over a divorce that happened in 1979.

The problem with family law is that it is based on the assumption that in a divorce the husband is always at fault. My wife divorced me because she didn't love me and I didn't love her. There was no third party involved. It was a case of pure resentment on her part that I did not want to continue to be married to her but the system favored her. My own lawyer told me that if he was representing my wife he would have made sure she was awarded the whole value of the house and half my income for twenty years. That was my lawyer telling me I was a deadbeat before I had spent a dime.

The happy story is that my youngest son and his wife have established a relationship with me after thirty years and I have given him all of my personal records, art work that I have made, everything I own, so that he knows who I am, who I was and that I love him.

Meanwhile I am poor, suffering from MS, arthritis and COPD. I am sixty years old and may have five years left to me. Meanwhile my exwife has been living on a disability pension from a phoney accident claim negotiated by the same lawyer that represented her in the divorce. She now owns the house that I bought in 1978 for $48,000 which is presently worth $1.2 Million. She hasn't worked in fifteen years. Meanwhile I work in a call center to make ends meet.

The upside is that I will die happy because I have gotten back in touch with my son. She will die bitter because I have gotten back in touch with my son. Her greatest disappointment is that the story that I died in a car accident in 1990 turned out to be false.

Hate is a soul destroying force. Unfortunately, in divorce that hatred destroys the happiness of children because of the irrationality of one or both of the parents. In my case a women who should have been treated for mental illness 30 years ago has manipulated the court system and destroyed the peace of mind of everyone in her family as well as my own.