Child Support: Right or Wrong?

There are rumors about my birth and who my father is, but I can not prove what is true. My birth certificate states that Angermeyer is my father and whenever I questioned my mother she adamantly agreed that the birth certificate is accurate. It's hard to believe though because she wasn't in love with him. She admitted that the only reason she married him was because she was pregnant with me. It's also hard to believe because two other people denied that he was the father. Of course, her response to their denials was simply "They weren't there when it happened. How would they know?" But they were around. My grandmother and my aunt were involved enough at that time to know more than I do and why would they lie about it? My grandmother did not know exactly who my father was, but she didn't think it was Angermeyer. My aunt said she believed it was a man named Margolis. I've looked in the mirror many times trying to figure out if I look more German or more Greek, and I really can't figure it out.

Regardless, for the first 11 years of my life, while we lived in New Jersey, Angermeyer paid child support as my father. I didn't meet him until I was about 8 years old. He was a bartender and his brothers were cops. He came from a good family and I met his mother also. They were very kind people. It's weird meeting someone like that though. You're told they are family, but you don't have any feeling about it. When my mother and I moved to Florida, the child support payments stopped. I suppose legally if the child is in another state, there is no legal requirement of payment, because the payer is supposed to be able to visit (in most cases). My mother wasn't upset at the end of the payment because it wasn't much money and she knew that she could do better financially on her own anyway. I wasn't upset that I wouldn't see him anymore because I had no emotional connection to him. When I became an adult, I wrote to him looking for answers. I suppose he knew why I was writing and he never wrote back. In my opinion, that only confirms what my grandmother and aunt told me.

In my 49 years of existence as an American, I've seen and heard many cases and stories of "dead beat dads" and "single mothers". Although my mother married 5 different men, I always considered her a single mother because those men had no influence on me or power regarding my upraising. To my mother, the marriage was between them and had nothing to do with me. So I always tell people I was raised by two women: my mother and my grandmother - and to me that's a fact.

In 1997, I gave birth to my only child. I was not legally married. The pregnancy and the single parenting were not easy even though I was 25 and 26 years old at that time. I wasn't a teen mom. I had work experience and home-making experience. I had graduated from high school, had some college under my belt, and had even done some traveling. I felt I was ready. I provided all of the information to the Department of Children and Families organization in regards to who the father was at the time that I applied for medical insurance and food stamps. I was never awarded child support payments and I believe it was because the father had moved far away to another state, and therefore there could be no visitation. I was hurt by both factors. I desperately wanted my son to have a father in his life. I didn't want him to go through the same fatherless life that I had experienced. I felt guilty for having made the mistake of getting pregnant without being married. My mother was supportive somewhat, but she had my younger sister to raise so she was not as involved as my grandmother was with me. I felt terribly alone and was hurt by other comments like "single mothers are a plague on humanity" and "she's a hit and run case". I tried to ignore those comments and I worked hard to support our home and get my college education, hoping that upon college graduation, our circumstance would improve to the point that those notions would not matter. I failed. My son was removed from my care by DCF in 2003 because I was being hospitalized for Bipolar illness. I asked them "Do you really think that I abused him?" They told me "No one said you abused him. It is neglect." I could not argue that it wasn't true. As a single mother always working, he was indeed being neglected by me. It was impossible to earn enough money for our survival and also give him the time and attention he deserved. I began to understand why so many people made harsh comments about single parenting.

Many years later, in 2011, I married a man who had divorced his first wife. They had three children together while they were married and he was required to pay child support on the two younger daughters who were still in school. When I met him, he was struggling financially. He was living with his parents, had a good job, but his bills/debts were making it very hard on him. We were married and we worked together as a team, especially financially to make sure that his financial obligations were met. It took six years to pay off his child support. We had numerous other bills to pay while doing it like rent, electricity, cable, car payment, car insurance, and credit cards. We had to pay the child support for both daughters, although he was only allowed to see one of them because of other stipulations regarding their pasts. With my history, I found the situation very unfair. For all those years, for all the hard work we both put in, we never got a tax return because it always went to the child support debt. The worse part about it was the way the children behaved towards us, as if we were garbage, even though we were even more generous than just the child support payments; Making sure to remember the holiday gifts, taking them to restaurants and theme parks, and doing our best to make happy and loving family memories. When his youngest daughter finished school and moved in with us, I even co-signed on a car loan for her. She repaid me by calling the cops on me when I was having a Bipolar episode and couldn't stop crying one day. Her boyfriend at the time kept calling her father a monster. I suppose children just don't appreciate how difficult it is to make child support payments plus give time and love and shelter? I suppose new high school graduates are still in "childish" mindframes.

So what is the point of all this experience? I have no idea. When I say "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt" or "damned if you do, damned if you don't" maybe you'll understand why now. Are children just some kind of money machine for women (or men)? Is it like "well, he doesn't really like me, and I can't support myself, so if I spit out a litter, I can cash in on health benefits and child support which is better than working for minimum wage..." Is that why we needed the "Department of Children and Families"? Because some people just use children as some kind of cash cow? Because some people work too much and the kids get neglected? Because some people work 80 hours per week to pay child support and then on their one free day they get so drunk they ruin another marriage or act like a monster to one of their children? Is Child Support Right or Wrong? When I was a single mother I was happy to get food stamps and Medicaid, and did the rest on my own without child support. Would the Child Support payments have made any difference for me or my son? Would it have stopped what interfered with our lives in 2001? ???? Would it have stopped my break down in 2003? ???? Would it have stopped me feeling so defeated and hopeless that I gave him up for adoption in 2005? ???

I'll never know. But hey, at least I helped my ex-husband do the so-called "right" thing.