Okay, my X plunged so deeply into alcoholism and tried to fulfill his dream of becoming a lawyer that he didn`t notice his family falling apart. Instead of being there for us, he got drunk into oblivion while I held on for the rest of my life as I struggled to keep things „NORMAL” in our home. I struggled to pay the bills and avoid defaulting on our mortgage while he ran to local bars with his nasty drunk secretary (also an alcoholic) and disappeared several times over the course of a whole night. During this time, I struggled to keep a safety blanket around our two young children, who noticed something was wrong with Dad. He didn`t remember how I sacrificed myself, sometimes he paid all the bills to be able to finish law school. He didn`t remember that he promised to do it for „US.” He had no recollection of us being married when he cheated on me one Valentine`s night and posted to the drug dealer, the alcoholic slime ball, that she had „freed” him. (She used you, by the way, to get what she wanted.) He ignored all our attempts that our children and I made to tell him that we love him and please stay, it`s okay, you can stay. He failed to read my countless loving and encouraging text messages as he struggled with his stuff. Instead, he made sure to read all of his secretary`s messages, and they certainly were NOT all business. (Guess what kind of baby, I struggled too, but I wasn`t looking for a way out.

I was looking for one everywhere. I thought that`s what you wanted too.) He forgot that I was his wife, and it would have been thoughtful to introduce me to his law school classmates after graduation. Instead, he introduced his friends to the ladies he graduated with. I endured so much from him because I believed in him, in our marriage, in our family, and I believed that we could get through all this if we went this far and were always together. Instead, he came out, but not before telling our 4-year-old (while I was at work) that Daddy was leaving Mommy. He also revealed all the neighbors in his little secret while I played the wife and mother and went to work every day. I worked full time, making sure the kids went to and from daycare, the bills were paid, the house was cleaned, the refrigerator was cleaned and full. Can you imagine what it was like to try to make him understand the need to pay his fair half of the bills when he didn`t want to listen to me on even the smallest things? It was a nightmare. When I told him we were late with our mortgage, he angrily said, „Maybe you should look for a second job.” To be honest, he didn`t even pay half the bills because I paid for the whole family`s health insurance through my job. That`s a whopping $478 more a month that he would never admit.

So, in my eyes, he had it damn good! He had it done! He had a beautiful wife, two beautiful children and was a rising star in the legal world. He had fulfilled his dreams that he didn`t even know he had (his children). I sacrificed a lot. Of course we had our problems, every couple does. Of course, I was sometimes a pain in the Azz but it was. Unfortunately, alcohol became far more important than anything we worked for, far more important than his wife and children. Much more important than his cozy home, where he did it. Alcohol destroyed his perception of how things were.

It destroyed his thinking, emotions, situational awareness, and ability to be patient while communicating with me. After an arduous effort on my part to listen to him, to help him, he only got worse, so I reluctantly let go, and with him my personal path entered into grief. Mourning the loss. Almost ten years of hard work to get where we were, and I had to drop the cards where they wanted. It was hard, extremely hard to see my little girl and my little boy struggling with this. I had to smile at the neighbors and pretend that my soul was not shaken when they asked where my husband had gone and easily explain as if I was okay. Friends also asked what was going on. It was like such an intrusion into the personal hell I was going through. My children experienced wild, emotional mood swings and uncontrollable crying.

All I could do was hold them, tell them I loved them, promise them that Dad loved them too, and hold them even more. His decision to leave destroyed all our people and two years later, we`re still trying to pick up the pieces. Not everything is smiling and painless. Some days I still cry, and so do our children, and other days are good. Our recovery is a work in progress and it is far from over. If we could be a happy, healthy family, I would do it all, but that`s it. Once trust is broken, it can take longer than the 9 years we spent building our lives. I don`t have the strength to believe in this kind of recovery. Instead, I count my blessings and try to take it one day at a time.

I play and I`m a fool with children. Some days are more difficult than others. Some days need more patience and others are difficult, but we are alive and well. Everything will be fine. in time. Now that I`ve figured this out, I have to admit that the mere thought of a father complaining about child support makes me sick, I literally want to throw up. BUT, that being said, I understand why some women skip the details and go straight to the publication (I read the details first). I can sympathize with some of these men, yes, they have a hard and true life, every situation is different and I think men (fathers) should also have a voice. I`m glad I came across this article. I can now fully understand why my husband is still bitter about me because I set up child support. He doesn`t let me pay more than half the bills.

He also has to pay for half of the pediatric medicine (which I have been doing myself for 5 years), more homemade meals, scratches on the back, lots of love and encouragement in difficult times, more sex on a whim. It`s all gone. sad. But it was his choice, I`m sure he had coaching from (work) friends who had NO idea what it was really like at home, but he still made the final choice by filing for divorce. Although I`m devastated by the demise of our marriage, I also feel like I`ve tried my damn thing. I tried and tried and tried. I miss our little family. I feel a big loss for what could have been, but on the other hand, the ball was in his field and he dropped it. I couldn`t say, „No, we`re not going to get divorced.” When I tried to talk to him, he excluded me, blamed me, and continues to do so.

It`s a terrible feeling to feel helpless and see everything you`ve worked for fall apart. One day I said to a friend, „It was as if he took my life, threw it out the window and broke it into a million little pieces while he was driving at 100 miles an hour.” Even more tragically, there are no laws in the Texas Family Code that require the person receiving child support to actually spend the money to support the child. There are only laws that state that a judge must assume that the money is actually spent on the child! I`m sorry, but I don`t believe your story for a second. If allegations of drug abuse are made against a party in litigation, drug and alcohol testing is MANDATORY to prove or refute these allegations. No court will take these kinds of allegations at face value without evidence, especially in a custody case. I don`t care if you`re a man, you`d be ordered to get tested. You should consider what the father-daughter relationship was like in those first two years. The only reason I say this is because I saw your message in the first place. I am completely desperate. I don`t know if I`m the only father who has felt this way, and I don`t know how anyone can overcome the feeling that the child doesn`t want to spend time with them. I was basically raising my daughter alone, I was a stay-at-home dad and she and I were together every day.

My wife started seeing someone else and blamed me for being distant. So she wanted a divorce. My daughter has never been near me since. Her mother just moved into the new man and doesn`t like my daughter and my relationship. I recently lost my job as a therapist because, honestly, I couldn`t do my job ethically because I wanted to tell men things based solely on my experience. I paid his child support with cheques for years. But now she is suing me for past amounts, because she knows she can get money. To be honest, she could have what she wants. I just want my baby back. Or there is no real reason to continue. You can`t extract blood from a stone, as the old saying goes.

Of course, he can owe you tens of thousands of dollars in child support. You could let the courts take his car and send him to jail. But if you honestly know he doesn`t have that money, do you really want to do it? Yes? What do you get in return? Let me ask you. Why is it acceptable to see women as victims of rape and not men as victims of archaic family and divorce laws? Things aren`t the same right now, so don`t pretend they are. I know women have a monopoly on victimization, but it`s normal to see men as victims. I know it takes away some of your power as a woman, but that`s okay. People have been wronged, accept that. All the data point in that direction. Women who pay child support are outliers.

So no, these are not parental rights. These are the rights of the father. Utah uses a somewhat archaic way of calculating orders. It is based on the assumption of earning potential, what custodial parents earn, and what non-custodial parents earn before taxes and after older support orders. Let us say the mother earns $59,000 a year and the father $38,000. The mother has three children to support in addition to her current husband, the father has only one with this mother. Without thinking twice, who should pay more for support? Note: While Texas Family Code 154.123 offers a number of reasons why a judge may deviate from child support guidelines, the problem is that they rarely do so.