The Other Side of Child Support

Most of the readers will probably find it hard to believe that the context of this article was written by a single divorce mother of two sons. Nevertheless, it was.
First, I was married at the tender age of seventeen and had my first child at the age of nineteen. My husband was a good provider, throughout our eight years of marriage. However, he never understood the meaning of the word faithful. I do not fault him for this because he was only nineteen when we wedded and I believe he was just too young.

I had one thing going in my favor at the end of our marriage. I had been working throughout our entire 8 years of marriage, only taking the allotted six weeks maternity leave offered to me when I gave birth twice. At the time I was an Administrative Assistant to the Chief Financial Officer of a large metropolitan hospital. I made a decent salary and because I worked for a hospital, I had an extensive benefit package. My husband continued to supply support, when business was good. He was a Self-Employed Electrician and a very good one at that. Then he got re-married approximately three years after the divorce. His new wife had two children from a previous marriage. Eventually they had two children together. At first the child support checks amounts were less and then I started receiving them less frequently until I started receiving nothing.

By this time, I was re-married and my husband made a good salary. It was hard to prove and pinpoint my ex-husband's salary because he was self-employed. So I never did bother to take him to court because I did not see the point anymore.

But then my eyes were awaked to the other side of the child support issue through my eldest son feelings of helplessness. He and his son's mother gave birth to my beautiful grandson in 2006. My son was only working a Security Guard job with no benefits and he knew he would need something better. He was laid off from the Security job and decided to take a training course that lasted for 90 days without pay. The important thing is if you were one of the few selected to be hired, you would no longer have a job you would have a life-time career. So he decided it was worth the risk.