Custodial Parents Get the Shaft

Since my ex-husband isn't working yet again, and I have no source of income at the moment, people are telling me to go to Social Services and apply for cash assistance. I'm not going to do that, not again. I've done it before and I ended up getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. I'll tell you why. If I've written about this before, please bear with me; it deserves repeating.

Rex the ex got fired from his job a few years ago and spent almost a year trying to find one, or so he said. Meanwhile, I had to apply for cash assistance, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as they call it down at Social Services just to support my kids while I was looking for work.

I received a whopping $340 a month in cash from the state to support three kids. It's funny because the same state that tells me I'm only allowed that amount in cash assistance is the same state that tells me I'm entitled to at least $675 a month in child support for three kids because raising kids takes money. That seem odd to you? It does to me.

Not only did I only get that small amount, but I also had to do 40 hours a week of a combination of job search and volunteer work so that the state would know I wasn't sitting home doing nothing. Mind you, I have never just sat at home and done nothing, but I guess I'm one of the few since these rules are in place. The 30 hours of job search had to be logged and turned in to my case worker every week, and the 10 hours of volunteer work had to be signed off on by someone where I volunteered - in this case, my daughter's school - and then faxed to my case worker every week.

Now, this is my gripe, and why I feel that custodial parents get the shaft. I had to do all of the job searching, volunteering, and attending classes at the employment council, plus maintain contact with my case worker, yet Rex the asshole didn't have to do a fucking thing to prove to the state that he was looking for work. Not one drop of work to show that he was attempting to find a way to support his children.

When I called and asked Child Support Enforcement what they were going to do about him not paying - suspend his license, arrest him, whatever their options are - I was told, "If he's not working there's no money for us to take." Gee, ya think?! When I asked why they weren't forcing him to look for work and prove that he's doing so the representative had no answer. When I asked her what the 'Enforcement' part of Child Support Enforcement meant she, again, had no answer.

So basically, the custodial parent is the one who has to work their ass off to make sure their kids are being taken care of, and jump through hoops to get cash assistance that might come close barely covering the bills, and the non-custodial parent is permitted by the state of Missouri to be a dead beat if that's what the parent chooses to do. And believe it or not, if the custodial parent decided to withhold visitation from the dead-beat non-custodial parent because that parent isn't supporting the kids, any judge in the system could, if he or she chose, reverse custody and hand the children over to the dead beat. Imagine that.

Something needs to be done about this fucked up system, and custodial parents need to be given more help in collecting child support. If it comes to a point where the custodial parent needs to collect cash assistance because of a dead beat parent, the state needs to allot enough funding to that parent so the household bills can actually be paid, and then they need to ensure that the dead beat is actively job hunting. The state ends up recouping that money from the non-custodial parent when child support resumes anyway.

Stop treating the custodial parent with so much disdain, and start putting in the effort to collect child support from the non-custodial dead beat parent.

Until next time...peace to all.