My apologies to those who are less thrilled will being given an opportunity to see inside my personally struggles with being a non-custodial father and having undue frustration with various aspects of the child support system.
What's a non-custodial father to do? Pt. I
What's a non-custodial father to do? Pt. II
Subsection 1.
This is the third installment in my series. I contacted my lawyer earlier this morning to talk about some aspects of my case, including the fact that both New Jersey and Pennsylvania never report the same amount of arrears, and the conundrum that is credit reporting. As I said in my previous diaries, I have one child and pay X amount of dollars, on top of my arrears, which I'm paying off currently. The credit problem is basically that if I owe $200, and NJ is reporting a $200 debt and Pennsylvania is reporting $200, it shows up on my credit report that I owe two separate entities each $200, and shows a cumulative total amount of debt as $400. I think this is unfair, as does my lawyers.
I contacted the PA-SCDU which is like the top division that handles my child support, in PA. I inquirerd about who to discuss this credit reporting issue and they referred me back to my local DRO.
Calling the DRO is pointless, as nobody picks up a phone so today I had to trek back into the city to get a chance to speak to someone. Mind you I'm sick, and it's snowing. Not quite the trouble I really want to go through but...it's got to be taken care of.
So I get down to the DRO at 11a and it's rather quiet, unlike yesterday. I went to the information desk to find out who to talk to about this situation. Even the information desk clerk was surprised abut the dual reporting on my credit report and just his body language suggested that something certainly isn't proper and that it's not normal and that something can be done about it. So I got a clipboard to fill out and had a seat until I was called. My number was 79 and luckily, they were already on 75. Yesterday I was number 100 and went I sat down, they were at 70-something.
A young woman calls my number shortly after I sit and I get up and sit down at her desk. I tell her that I was here yesterday and spoke to another woman and then brushed over quickly why I was there yesterday. Then I got into the credit reporting part. I told her that I had already inquired about it at PA-SCDU and that I was referred back to my DRO. I explained the situation with both agencies reporting the debt and how on top of the credit agency reporting a cumulative amount, each agency was reporting different amounts.
This woman understood what I was frustrated about. She seemed concerned that A) Two agencies were reporting the same debt and that B) the amounts were different. We both attributed this to the possibility of time delay as when I make a payment (or is now the case, a wage garnishment) it first goes to Harrisburg, then to Jersey, where it is disbursed to my son's mother.
A couple things I've picked up along the way. According to Jersey, when they receive a payment, they disburse it to the mother and also send notice back to PA to update the amount on my account. New Jersey, as the mean woman said yesterday, also has the proper amount on my account, since it was originated there.
This raising some suspicion about a few things. I had the woman today at my DRO pull up my payment history again and she showed me where payments were made, where accruals were made (I wasn't paying)and explained a little bit about how it worked. She said one thing she can do is provide me with a piece of paper that has a certified amount of arrears. That's like a legit piece of paper, so far as I know and has been explained to me. But it raises even more suspicion.
New Jersey says there numbers are correct. Pennsylvania just gave me a certified copy of my arrears. Pennsylvania...didn't pull these numbers out of thin air. The only numbers they have to work with are the original numbers that they were provided with, by Jersey, when Jersey ordered the execution of payment order to PA. Perhaps, again, this is just a time delay problem. But tomorrow, when I talk to 'Dan' from the NJ branch of child support, I wonder what's going to happen when I ask him what Jersey says my arrears are, and if different, that PA has certified my amount at a different and/or lower level, and what NJ makes of that, given that PA is only working with the original set of numbers given to them by NJ in the first place. I can't wait to see what Dan says to that, if, indeed, the numbers don't match.
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Subsection 2.
Now there's the possibilty that money that I paid to my account has either gone missing or not been properly handled, in regards to what I owe in arrears. First some background.
Shortly after moving to PA in 2000, I started receiving notices from the PA-SCDU that I had to pay them child support. So, in short terms, I sent them a check for $500, as I knew I was already behind. I checked the website. I checked the website. I checked the website. I checked that damn website after remitting payment for around a month before it finally posted onto my account. It took so long, in fact, that I contacted PA-SCDU about it and said if it's going to take this long for my payment to reach my son, wouldn't it just be easier to continue paying NJ? PA-SCDU agreed and said I should just pay NJ. And I did. Then I relapsed, didn't have a job, etc. Well...actually I didn't have a job for a long time after moving because I got into a car accident the day after I moved to PA, but that's a different story.
Fast forward to 2004. After a string of crappy jobs, I finally had a real job, working at UPENN, where I made enough money to pay what I owed. I started sending checks at first well in excess of what my order was since I knew I had arrears. I sent just shy of $1000. September 2004 was when I had my first meeting in PA with a order execution officer. My son's mother was there as well and sadly, whenever I'm in the same room with her, I can't talk. I don't know why...maybe I really wasn't mad enough at this overall situation. Not to mention the person we were sitting down with was a dick and threatened to throw me in jail right then and there for nothing other than to try to scare me. I figured at that point Yes or No would be the only two words coming out of my mouth.
He asked my son's mother about any payments I had made. She had a printout of the Jersey child support website, which shows the last payment received, but no history of payments. She had one printout and it was the original $500 check that I first sent to PA, before they told me to continue paying Jersey. Being unable to really speak, I made no mention of the other $1000 dollars I had sent straight to Jersey. This one payment was dotted down in the man's notes.
Back to today. While sitting down with the woman who was handling my situation, we were looking back over the payments PA has record of. She made a reference to how things work, and it was basically the same thing the lady from Jersey said the day before. If I make a payment to Jersey, and circumvent PA, NJ will still notify PA of the payment upon receipt and the necessary updates will be made in regards to my account.
Looking back over the PA payment records - right there in front of me, we go all the back to when PA first got the order. There's the $500 that I sent through PA. Going further we see some payments and some accruals. Going allllllll the way up to today, there is no entry for the 5 payments I made, totalling just shy of $1000. PA doesn't have any information on those payments. It's quite possible that those payments were never properly notified to PA, and in that not happening, my account may not have been properly updated.
Sadly, the New Jersey website system is not so user-friendly. Unlike PA, I can only see the last payment received and my current balance. I cannot see records of all the received payments. This is why I have to call 'Dan' tomorrow and go over this with him, as well as get printouts of all the payments Jersey has received from me since...oh...2000, when I first moved to PA.
It'll be interesting if it turns out Jersey did indeed receive those payments, and never properly posted them to the PA side of my account. It'll certainly help me out, since it will be a huge chunk out of my arrears, bringing me very close, if not all the way, to being even and all caught up.
If on the other hand Jersey says they never got those payments, then the fun begins. I send all my payments in the form of United States Postal Service money orders. They have tracking numbers on them. I have all the receipts. If Jersey says they never got them, and a subsequent investigation into their whereabouts by the USPS turns up that they were indeed deposited by Jersey, then either someone dropped the ball, or someone wanted to take out a little vengeance or give a gift to my son's mother.
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Perhaps in the end, it will all turn ok kosher. All the money was received and maybe it just posted to PA in a format that doesn't show up as a payment. That's fine. If it's correct, than it's correct. I won't argue with that. But if it's wrong, than somebody screwed up somewhere and this mistake needs to be corrected.
Perhaps Diary IV will come out tomorrow, if I get any new information.
Cheers!