Once you understand child support payments, and thus the ability to be jailed and eventually charged with a felony and have your civil rights revoked, are tied to custody you'll understand part of the reason for the high stakes. If you end up with <50% custody, you have to keep a job that pays at least as good as your current one for 18 years, pray a judge believes you when you have trouble with work, or expect to end up in a jail cell with your license, property, passport, and civil rights revoked.
The only debtor's prison there is in the US is the one for people with <50% custody. Therefore if the other parent makes claims of abuse, it's imperative you have counterclaims to make sure the other parent is in just as bad light to make sure you won't be subject to imprisonment at the whim of a judge at any misfortune you have.
"The only debtor's prison there is in the US is the one for people with <50% custody."
The amount of people in county jail due to failure to pay child support is shocking. It is one of the best kept secrets in the jail system. The numbers are hidden since they are often bailiff arrests not integrated with sheriff stats [operates jails] under civil contempt. Once you are caught into this system and serve jail time you will most likely lose your current job. Thus begins a debtors spiral: Appear in court, can't pay, jail, release, appear in court, can't pay, jail - you will face ever increasing penalties and bizarre state punishments like having your drivers license suspended.
This system is particularly cruel to High cost of living / High paid individuals. EG. If you make 100k per year and finalize your divorce [lose house, 1/2 savings, 40k in lawyer fees, begin renting in high cost area, forced private school tuition] - alimony with child payments could be ~3k per month post tax. You might be able to swing this a few months. However, stress from the divorce could result in job loss. In the state of Florida for example, just being behind $2500 is a felony (they haven't updated their law). If you attempt to go to another state to find work it is considered fleeing (another felony).
It's hard to find evidence or tape of anything I said since cases are buried in confidential family courts, here is one example of an unrepresented person in the debt spiral. Watch until the end: jail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvOIdhJg1As
There was a case near where I live where a guy with severe mental illness - not understanding where he was - was arrested for failing to pay child support.
Fortunately it encouraged reform.
But neighboring states still issue automatic arrest warrants, and out state is required to serve then even though we are disgusted by it.
It’s always: young, impoverished black male with a warrant from a neighboring state.
Many local police are disgusted by it. But they don’t have a choice: warrants are warrants.
They'll even imprison you for late child support if you were brutally and publicly held hostage overseas and physically have no possible way to pay. (the whole reason he was overseas was in part to perform contracting to pay his child support).
> The sort of rational thinking you are describing was completely absent from this process
The unreasonably high stakes of “losing” a divorce case make it more like a no-holds barred cage match. I think America likes it this way because on some level it believes people must suffer for getting divorced.
Not everybody's divorce is like this. My ex and I went through voluntary mediation and came to a mutually agreed settlement, with shared legal custody.
We just both recognized that the process was about separating our lives, not resolving our feelings about one another. And that's pretty much always why it goes wrong - people want to use court proceedings as a substitute for therapy.
That doesn't make any sense, because it being a "no-holds barred cage match" makes it more likely for one party to lose. Going in with a co-operative mindset (at least until the other party demonstrates they are not) should be win-win.
Accusations of abuse seem pretty rational to me in a custody battle. It's one of the best ways to get custody. Come up with some 'witnesses', trick the kid into testifying on your side. Have the attorney write up the sob story and blindside the other partner so they're left defenseless. Bonus points if you can get a restraining order in the process so custody is lost and continuity is maintained by continuing the custody terms of the restraining order -- also a good way to destroy means of defense as in some states a spouse has their firearm rights suspended during the order.
it is actually not. Courts tend to punish those if they don't believe them - accusing partner of abuse is fairly often how you get less custody.
Restraining orders are not easy to get either. It can take quite a lot of fight even in cases where actual stalking and threats of violence are going on.
You're the judge and I'm a 'battered wife.' In this fiction: I self-harm myself (claim it was the husband), come up with a terrible and fairly convincing but unverifiable story of abuse and be sure to mention to you my husband has several guns and has threatened me and the kids with them. Do you choose to issue a restraining order, or do you roll the dice and hope nothing bad happens?
"Going in with a co-operative mindset (at least until the other party demonstrates they are not) should be win-win."
Do you have a source for this? In my state, and many others, temporary protection from abuse orders against spouses are very easy to get just by saying the right things without any real evidence. Those stay in effect for a couple of weeks until a hearing. Then it's difficult to get them overturned unless you have physical proof because the course want to "err on the side of caution".
There are divorce lawyers who actually recommend filing false protection orders during divorce, for the very reasons stated by the previous commenter. It's well known amongst divorce attorneys that some in their profession do this. There is generally no punishment for those attorneys since you can't prove their involvement easily, nor for the false filer in many cases. After all, if your spouse is a felon (perjury) the courts will likely make you pay more in child support and alimony due to their limited earning potential.
Things can vary by state. However, I don't know of any state that isn't going to take sides (literally why the judge/master is there if it comes to a trial). Courts are generally not going to ignore any claims about abuse.
This is a well known issue that may be more prevalent in some states than others, but is certainly a national issue.
> If you end up with <50% custody, you have to keep a job that pays at least as good as your current one for 18 years, pray a judge believes you when you have trouble with work, or expect to end up in a jail cell with your license, property, passport, and civil rights revoked.
I don't think thats how child support works in most states. Income shares model basically looks at the cost of raising a child in a particular jurisdiction then pro-rates that based on the parents income. For instance if the cost of child per month is 1k and the man earns 50k and the woman earns 100k (assuming woman has custody), the man would pay $333 a month (50 / 150 * 1k)
That is how it initially gets set. It's a mess to have it reset though. If you lose my job and it takes 6 months to find another one, you have to keep paying. If the new job you find pays 75% of your old one, you still have to pay the old amount. You can petition the court to change it, but they are reluctant because some people take lower jobs to spite an ex. So instead they tend to set it based on "potential earning capacity".
"OH look, you made $100k this year and have a masters in IT. You should be able to earn that forever to pay child support and/or alimony." ...is basically how it goes.
I wanted to add also, that I wonder how this affects people who reasonably can't maintain that level. For example, if I were to get divorced it would crush me. I'm barely holding on at my job now (meh to bad reviews, I hate the place, I have no marketable skills to get hired anywhere else). I'm pretty sure the added stress of a divorce would lead to even further performance issues and being fired.
Well the simple way to get around this is to just not have kids. It’s easy! Just don’t have them and your life will be great. Happily married, 0 kids. 1 vasectomy.
This isn't how divorce or child support payments work. This is just a popular line of reasoning in Men's Rights circles. It's certainly possible but very unlikely.
I know lots of people that are divorced, with partial custody. Most like the situation better than when they were married.
Tell that to my dad, who dealt with a vindictive ex-wife who cleaned him out and used my sister as a pawn against him. My sister still hates my dad to this day due to the lies she told her about him.
for every story like this there’s an opposite, my dad left the state to avoid child support, worked under the table to avoid wage garnishment, and I got to watch him buy expensive cars for girlfriends from afar while my mom worked 60 hours a week to keep us barely above the poverty line
The only debtor's prison there is in the US is the one for people with <50% custody. Therefore if the other parent makes claims of abuse, it's imperative you have counterclaims to make sure the other parent is in just as bad light to make sure you won't be subject to imprisonment at the whim of a judge at any misfortune you have.