Sprung At Last

You didn’t really think The Foreigner was going to take that lying down, did you? He applied to get his support reduced, and it went up instead.

He’s legally entitled to a hearing,  and he demands one.

I get a notice in the mail for a hearing by phone.

The day before the hearing, a DCS coordinator calls me and asks me to walk him through the paperwork. I am very frustrated – I have mounds of legal paperwork to deal with to rid myself of The Departed – I don’t have the time and energy for this. I vent.

He pays me so little and now we have to waste our time with this, I say. I pay far more than this. I always have. I don’t even understand where that $25 number came from, now you say $75 a month but if that’s right it always should have been more. I just thought if I left him alone with that sweet deal he’d leave me alone.

He listens. He asks more questions. He suggests I mention some of this at the hearing, and suggests how I might phrase some of these things for the judge. He says, in passing, these payments don’t look right to me. But he doesn’t really know, he’s just there to coordinate the hearing, he says.

I’m confused and frustrated and just want to be left alone, I say.

We all dial into the hearing. There is a judge, and she starts talking. We each take turns speaking when she asks a question.

She is sympathetic to The Foreigner’s assertion that the bookkeeping hasn’t been done properly, and she agrees it should have been done properly.

In fact, she says, looking at it, it looks like perhaps we should go back to 2008 and make sure all the payments are in order. These payments you’ve been making may not be right, and we should get this all straightened out. If there’s been over- or under-payment, then we should add or subtract that from future payments. But we’d need a formal review and another hearing.

Would you like to do that? she asks him.

No … no, he says. I’m not asking for that. I just mean going forward.

Would you like to do that? she asks me.

Actually, yes I would, I say.

He starts to argue.

She says it’s not his turn to talk.

We are granted a continuance so the Division of Child Support can do all the back calculations, determine the full amount of arrears, and calculate his new payment.

The hearing coordinator calls me the next day, to let me know the name of the person I need to work with to get all the receipts collected, and what exactly the judge will want to see. To expedite things and make sure it’s all done properly.

I’m a neutral party, he says, just here to help the process run smoothly.

Thank you, I reply.

The Child has a father, of course, and it isn’t The Departed. I’ll call him The Foreigner, since a) he lives in a foreign country and b) I have to call him something. It’s the nicest thing I’ve called him in a long time.

Yes, I really, really suck at choosing husbands.

So, a month or two after The Departed left – right around Christmas, in fact – I received a notice from the Division of Child Support (the nice people who are the only reason I get any child support from him). Apparently The Foreigner demanded an accounting of child care costs that DCS collects from him and sends to me – one component of his monthly payment.

What an odd coincidence, I thought, that it occurred to him to ask for this accounting right at the most inconvenient possible time for me.

No, I don’t believe in coincidences.

Worse yet, because he had not asked for this accounting in such a long time, the DCS requested I retrieve records going back to 2008.

I call the DCS lady, frustrated and complaining. Four years worth of records? I ask. Yes, she says.

Do you know what a waste of time this is? I say. He pays me $25 a month in child care – and thinks it’s too much?

I know, she says. I couldn’t believe it when this landed on my desk. But I need the receipts and we’ll do the calculations as required by law.

So I collect it all and mail it off.

A month or so later, I get a notice from DCS: The amount of child care care he must now reimburse me for each month is increased to $75.

I chuckle.

My father says: Rarely do you see someone’s karma boomerang back at them so quickly. I admire The Foreigner for his splendid karma.