I divorced this year. My ex-husband slid again into the depths of alcoholism and created a misery that I and the children could no longer endure. Unfortunately, this is also bringing financial catastrophe for me and the children ever nearer. My children have an aunt and uncle that are very successful business owners -- I don't know what their income is, but I suspect that it would place them at the bottom of, or very close to, the much talked of "1%." I recently sent them a letter explaining my predicament, and asking for them to make up what the child support ought to be...because the children's father has chosen to use subterfuge to deflate his income, reducing the child support to very, very little, even while I have the kids 6.75 days of every week. The arrogant reply came yesterday -- telling me I need to work with the children's father, and, essentially, that they believed that if they helped me financially that it would prevent me from "pulling myself up by my own bootstraps." They profess a flavor of Christianity. This is my response:(I have edited out names)
You seem to have failed to notice something…the Ex and I are divorced. Our finances are separate. We don't work together in that way.
You are asking me to work together with the Ex to figure out how to provide for the children…you are asking me to work closely on financial matters with my abuser. That is unwise. (I had one therapist several months back that recommended that I permanently cut off all communication, face-to-face, phone, and written with the Ex for my own protection.)
You are asking me to work closely with the Ex…an individual who is mentally ill. I cannot even discuss these things with the Ex. I have tried, numerous times over the past 6 months since he has been sober. The conversations get nowhere because of his own anxiety and other mental issues. I cannot work on financial issues with someone who is mentally ill.
To illustrate the Ex's irrationality: the Ex from July to September had to be hospitalized a couple of times. He incurred nearly $40k in medical debt. During this entire time, his income was so low that he qualified for Medicaid. He applied three times. I attempted, each of the three times, to help him in figuring out what additional information was required, and to help him get it turned in by the deadline. He failed each of these three times to turn the required stuff in by the deadline. He said that it would take too much time from his work to complete the required paperwork. This is what he said even though doing the paperwork would wipe out $40k in debt, and his job only makes him $14k/year. He continues to have no medical coverage nor food stamps, even though his income is such that he is eligible for both. Right now, he owes court fees. Once again, his income is so low that all he needs to do is complete and turn in some paperwork to have the fees permanently waived. Instead he is ignoring the court notices. I'm sure that when the court sends out a warrant for his arrest and he lands in jail and before the court because he has not paid, he will vociferously claim that the system is unjust - all because he can't bring himself to print off some paperwork and fax it in.
I don't, as a general rule, order product for sale before receiving payment for it. So usually, all I can ever be forced to take a loss on is my own labor. The one time that wasn't the case was a year and a half ago. The Ex had sold a laptop at cost to his friend. He gave her the laptop before asking for payment for it. She has never paid for the laptop. The Ex is still friends with this lady. His family was in poverty and he essentially gave a friend a $550 laptop.
This is the individual I am supposed to work with to alleviate my financial situation? Surely you jest. It is I that kept the family financially sound for over a decade - the Ex was always the liability in that arena.
I wanted two things out of the divorce: (1) sole legal and physical custody of the children, and (2) the marital residence in my name only. I wanted sole custody so that, when needed, I could protect the children from their father. I got them both. But there are things I had to give up in order to get them. The Ex was in an auto accident a year ago that was not his fault. He will, eventually, receive a settlement for it. Because it occurred during our marriage, I would have legal rights to a portion of this settlement. I traded those rights away. After 10 years of marriage, much of it spent raising children and curbing my own career, I had a right to receive alimony. But the Ex was in no position to pay alimony. So I traded that right away, too. The Ex has no pressing financial need to improve his salary. I have no viable way to put pressure on him to get him to have that need.
The Ex does, once a week, and variously at other times, when he is not working (he works over 40 hours per week), watch the kids. However, sometimes he randomly falls through or is late. I can't count on him to do this. If he is supposed to watch the kids and it is a critical issue, I always have to arrange for back up childcare. (A month and a half ago my grandmother died and I flew out and back in on the same day to attend the funeral, costs paid by my father. I was appalled when I returned to discover that although the Ex was at the house to meet the children when they returned from school, that the children reported that Daddy had slept almost the entire afternoon and evening, and couldn't easily be wakened. My son reported crying because he didn't think Daddy was going to feed them dinner. I think it was Ambien. I told the children that from now on, if Daddy is watching them and he is sleeping a lot and cannot be wakened that they must call and tell me and that they also have my permission to go to the neighbor's house.)
I was verbally and emotionally abused for 11.5 years. I bear the emotional and psychological scars from this. They hamper me every day. I'm in therapy. I overreact emotionally to situations that arise…simple things activate my fight/flight system and I have to work to calm myself again. Sometimes it takes a few days before I return to baseline.
I don't have an older child that can watch younger children or to actively help keep the house up.
I don't have family nearby that can help in any effective way. My sister lives 45 minutes away and has three children younger than mine. I usually can't even afford the gas in the car to visit her. I am slowly making new friends - I had very, very few friends because The Ex exited every social group we were a part of after a short period of time, stating that "they all hated him." He also had other idiosyncrasies that, in combination with me working from home and the needs of three close in age children, effectively isolated me from others, and hampered me from developing friendships over the past decade.
I have three children that are slowly learning proper household routines and rules. This training was ignored for 3 or 4 years because of the level of stress that I was experiencing, which prevented me from addressing these issues. This learning is further hampered by my ADHD wonder-child's ADHD and anxiety.
I have three children that are showing signs of the stress our family was under for the past three years. Easy upsets. My son refuses to do most of his school work, and for a while several months ago, was talking about killing himself. I got my son in therapy. I am trying to spend one-on-one, quality time with each child on a regular basis to help us all heal from the ongoing crises we experienced over the course of several years.
My ADHD wonder-child was just denied respite care through his behavioral health management company. (Respite care is provided to caregivers of physical or mentally disabled or challenged individuals.) He has exhibited behaviors that are beyond their ability to address in a childcare situation. It confirmed my extant fear - that even if I wanted to, I cannot put my ADHD wonder-child in standard daycare or after-school care. How, how, how am I supposed to work enough hours to support myself and these kids financially??? If it weren't for the government mandating that all children be educated in the way that each individual child needs, my ADHD wonder-child would have been suspended from school a long time ago. Daycare providers are not required by law to provide care to difficult children. And the standard, culturally accepted discipline methods for children don't actually work with my ADHD wonder-child. Which confuses people caring for him greatly. Standard discipline methods actually bring out the worst of his behavior, which my ADHD wonder-child and I are then blamed for. The methods are not blamed, even though I know that by simply changing to different forms of discipline, my ADHD wonder-child is quite manageable (most of the time.)
I don't have the physical stamina that I had a decade ago. The last 10 years have taken quite a toll. I "burned the candle at both ends" for years and years, trying to make enough money to compensate for the Ex's spending beyond our means. Physically, I am unable to "burn the candle at both ends" any more. When I try, I get sick. I've tried numerous times in the past three years. I have to take care of myself physically or I am unable to care for the children properly.
I agree that I am intelligent and very capable. I believe that, in time, I have the potential of finding a niche that fits my situation and that will enable me to provide enough financially for myself and the children to stay in our home. However, I do not now know what direction that will take. I also recognize that in order to do the things that will enable me to find these opportunities that I need to (a) have my home, and (b) have the mental peace and space to pursue these ends. When I am chasing after every resource available to the poor and stressing over where my next mortgage payment will come from I am rendered incapable of pursuing the unique means that will likely result in finding that niche. I have, unfortunately, in the past three years repeatedly come up against my own limits. I am actively getting involved in my community in ways that are designed to find me a niche that will pay off financially, but it is an investment with no financial guarantees on results or time-frame.
Your own financial distress that you allude to occurred when the greater economy was on an uptick, after the financial downtime of 2000. My financial distress is happening post-2008, and while some in the media point to a bright economic future, a little digging around shows that the gains have all gone to those already wealthy, and that the rest of the nation is not even maintaining itself, it is regressing economically. Post-2008 music students are much more difficult to come by. Middle-income families are losing ground, and music lessons get the axe. This also affects the computer business - most of the people I know can't really afford to pay someone to fix a computer. They may utilize my help when in a huge pinch, but not for little stuff. In your own financial distress you also had a mentally sound partner. I have no partner.
You had a business deficit of 0.25 million that you were able to work your way out of. Neither your, nor your husband's capacity to work were infringed by this occurrence. I have no business debt. My only personal debt is my mortgage. So bankruptcy can't help me. My problem is that my ability to work is hampered by circumstances outside of my control, and that the children's father is failing to do his part, which is also something outside of my control.
You experienced a brief flirtation with poverty, and luckily, hard work got you out of it quickly. I have already experienced 2.5 years of soul-crushing poverty. I work very hard. But my situation has only continued to worsen. The only thing that has kept us afloat was a gift of money from my deceased grandmother and my parents that have been paying the electric bill. Without continued support, I may very well be navigating another decade of poverty before the children are sufficiently raised for me to effectively fully support myself financially. It will definitely be a full decade before I can begin to prepare for any sort of retirement for myself. Knowing this in advance, I pursued a divorce because the Ex had created such a life of misery for us that with him there was no future.
I was raised to be independent and look to myself for solutions. Through my entire marriage, I continued to believe that just around the corner things would look up. But that never happened. Instead, "things" just gradually became worse and worse, despite my best efforts, despite my always "playing by the rules."
You allude to the myth that the poor just need to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." This, like most myths, is fluff and fairytales. There are no guaranteed positive results that come from working hard and playing by the rules. Most everyone works hard and barely treads water. If you look at global statistics, of all of the developed countries of the world, the United States ranks dead last when it comes to upward mobility. Sure, there are a few that succeed wildly when they work hard and happen upon a streak of good fortune, but these are outliers, these are the exception that proves the rule. For most Americans, the "American Dream" is dead. It sure feels good when we tell people, "Just work hard, and you will make it," but there are so many broken down burdened people who believed that lie, fell because of it, and are now embittered. Personally, I believe the myth persists because it helps maintain the current power structures in our country and our world. Look deeper than your own experience, and you'll find the awful truth.
I find it odd that you would think yourself qualified to judge whether or not my situation merits outside help, that you would not trust my own judgment in such matters, since I am the one intimately aware of my situation.
In the last three and half years I have learned that there are problems beyond my ability to face alone. So I started sharing with others what I was going through. I have had to ask help - from the government, from my family, from you. I have learned that no one is alone in this life. We all work together to create the mosaic that is human life. I have much to offer the world, but as an emotionally battered single mom of a special-needs child plus two other children, I also need help to be able to reach my full potential. It is very abasing to ask for this help, but when I look at the beautiful faces of my three children I know that no sacrifice I make - even if it is a sacrifice of pride - is too great to ensure their emotional, mental, educational, and financial well-being. I know that one of those sacrifices is being "mom" first, before any other role I may carry, even before the role of "breadwinner." I know that will make the difference between raising children to be emotionally healthy, well-adjusted adults and raising children to be emotionally blighted, mal-adjusted adults.
You are free every day to live the lifestyle that you believe is the result of your own hard work. I, too, work very hard, every day. And my hard work pays off. But, currently, that payback does not come in financial form. It pays off in kisses from children. It pays off in thank yous from people at church who benefit from the music I share there. It pays off in hearty applause when I perform a song I wrote on open mic night at an acoustic music establishment (I have to pay a small cover fee.) It pays off when I give away something for free to someone else on freecycle who really, really needs it, and I see gratitude in another's eyes. I believe that these are contributions to society that matter just as much - if not more - as the income I report to DES, or the red entries on my balance sheet. I freely share the wealth I have with others - I share granola bars with people begging on the side of the road, because thanks to the generosity of the US population, I have enough in food stamps to provide good food for the kids and I. I share lemons and oranges and grapefruits with any who want them, eggs with others that are hurting financially and could really use some food. (The rest of the eggs I use or sell and the money pays for chicken feed.)
I asked for your assistance because I believed that if you found out ten years from now that your niece and nephews had suffered extreme financial deprivations for years without your knowledge, but you had the capacity all along to alleviate the depth of the deprivation, that you would be deeply troubled by that knowledge. So I decided to give you a heads up. Consider yourself forewarned. Most people don't have the power to make much of a difference. You have the power to alleviate suffering - you choose not to exercise that power. But, hey, it's okay for you to say, "No." It is not something I will ever be able to understand, but it is your right to make that decision.