Tried and True

Two weeks ago, Michael and I went to court. It all started last year when we had our two child support meetings. When Michael was ordered to pay $435 a month in child support, he was only working $12 hour weeks. Michael "suddenly" - *gasp* amazing!!! - found a second job, and I began receiving a reasonable amount of child support. About February this year, the child support dropped to nil - I got a whopping $32 one week, a whole $7.80 the next. When I called Michael to complain, he told me he had switched jobs - he was now working one full time job instead of two part time ones - and the regular payments would resume, he assured me, "as soon as the paperwork goes through Harrisburg". Riiiiiiight....

Despite my skepticism, he was telling the truth, or some version thereof. It took about a month, but then the regular payments resumed. He had also sent me $370 toward his personal debt to me (roughly $7000 to cover half of the credit card bills, student loans, etc) that he agreed to pay in full before 2014. He was going to send what he could after paying his bills each month, at least $120 a month. He sent two checks, one in April of 2009 (he signed the agreement in March), another check in May, and nothing since. Not that I'm doing too bad without him. With my madd math skillz, I have been whittling down the debt so that I'll have it paid off before 2014, even without his help, but I was still a mite testy. He agreed to send the money, he started sending it, and then he stopped sending it.

So I took him to court. Well, technically, the state of PA took him to court, and I kind of rode along on their shirt-tails. They sent me notice that he'd been summoned for reaching the glorious milestone of over $1000 of overdue support. I filed a civil suit for the equivalent of "breach of contract", to be tried simultaneously with the child support case. My fantabulous lawyer was not present for that train wreck. I can only imagine how great that would have been.

After the genuinely humbling experience of sitting through all of the "deadbeat dad" cases - ours was heard last due to the 'complication' of the double filing - and hearing from fathers who appeared to actually care about their kids, but were unemployed due to illness, addiction, or the like - and one case where (and I really felt for this guy) he had missed the notices sent by the court because he'd been attending classes for his HAZMAT license in another state - well, it was finally our turn. So, I let the state put on their case - just a slap on the wrist for Mike - a 'stern warning' that he needed to work more hours or get a job with higher pay to start working on his overdue support - and then I got to speak.

I presented the contract, and the canceled checks that showed he'd paid $370 with two checks. The judge said that he already was sending child support, this amount was, in effect, spousal support, even though our divorce papers specifically excluded that. He explained to me that if he were so inclined, he could put Mike in jail and allow him work release, but he didn't feel this would solve the situation. So he dismissed the case "without judgement", meaning that I could re-sue Mike in three months, when the Judge was set to retire. Lovely.

I wrote it off. A few times since then, I have written him little 'summaries' of his debt, including how much he would owe if I were a credit card company charging interest and overage fees. I mailed one, trashed the others without even mailing them. It was something that made me angry and perturbed just to think about it, and the process of writing letters and mailing them only made me more so. The money would have been nice, if only because I would probably owe nothing on my credit cards right now instead of $4K. But since I have viewed chosen this experience as one of personal growth, rather than personal gain, I am letting it go. Writing it off.

Case Dismissed.