Daddy's Girl

I'm taking a huge risk right now. I'm not going to write anything funny about my evil roommate, my cheap landlord, or my crazy kindergartners. This is a full on venting, so if you don't feel like reading you can stop now and I won't be offended.

My parents are divorced and my mother was awarded full custody, meaning that my father was ordered to pay $150 a week for child support. My mother was so heartbroken after my father cheated on her and left us she didn't bother to ask for alimony. Just child support. At the time my mother didn't have a job, we didn't have a car, we didn't have a phone, my Nana was clothing us and my Grandpa was paying to keep food on the table. I had no idea at the time but we had almost nothing.

In the beginning my father was working and paying child support regularly. We saw him every weekend and things were going well. At some point over the past fourteen years (that's how long they've been divorced) my father lost his job and stopped paying child support. Please keep in mind that he is only ordered to pay a meager $150 a week for two children. He now owes my mother over $10,500. He has tried to emmancipate my sister and I several times with no success.

My mother has worked 50-60 hours a week since the divorce so that my sister and I could have a nice life and go on school trips, vacations, movies, and college. She gets court dates about every 6 months to try and get her money. She goes to court, they demand my father to come up with about $1000 by that Friday at 4 pm, and if he doesn't pay they issue an arrest warrant. Most of the time he doesn't, they come arrest him, and his $1000 bail miraculously appears within the hour. This was a common occurance until about a year ago.

Last year my father decided to try to apply for permanent disability (as he has several times in the past). While he applies for permanent disability he gets welfare from the state of New Jersey. Welfare does not offer any support for my mother and the only support if offers my sister and I is coverage through Medicaid which we don't need because the only thing my mother does have is good health insurance (Thank God). He gets $250 a month and $150 in food stamps and doesn't have a damn thing to spend it on since he doesn't drive and lives with his mother.

So he calls my mother this morning and wants to play "Let's Make a Deal". His deal was to pay her $5,000 of the $10,500 that he owes her and allow him to stop paying for my sister in May when he stops paying for me. Great deal right? Yeah...