Stephen Baskerville

Child Support is full of more horrors than this: All of the following can happen to you regardless of fault and even if you are legally blameless, if you are divorced involuntarily and your spouse deserts you without legal grounds and takes your children. You will be forced to pay child support at levels that are generous enough to mothers to entice them into divorcing. Any arrearage in child support immediately incurs interest and fees that can quickly increase the arrearage manyfold: 10x or more. You can be forced to pay additional child support (“add-ons”) for additional things, even if they are calculated in the basic child support level. Your child support will not be reduced if you lose your job. Your child support will not be reduced if you are called up for active duty in the reserves, and upon returning you will immediately be arrested for any arrearages incurred while serving. If you are taken hostage or prisoner, you are required to pay child support for the time you are captive. You can be forced to pay an amount based not on what you earn but on what a judge says you should be earning. You can be forced to pay child support for children who live with you full time. Temporary income such as bonuses, severance pay, and overtime pay can be used to lock you into increased child support payments permanently. You can be ordered to pay an amount of child support that exceeds your income. You can be forced to pay for your children after they are adults. You can be forced to pay for children that are not yours. In some jurisdictions, you can be jailed for proving that the children are not yours. You can be forced to pay for children that other men are simultaneously paying for. You can be forced to pay child support for children that do not exist, and it cannot be refunded to you. If a third party pays your child support for you, that does not count, and you must still pay it. If they give you the money directly, that becomes “income” and can be used to lock you into increased payments. The income of your relatives (wife, parents, etc.) can be demanded and assessed in determining your level of child support, and it can be seized. If you take out a loan to pay child support, that loan counts as increased “income” and can be used to increase your payments. If you are forced to pay too much child support by mistake, the money can never be refunded. Your child support can be increased by orders from bureaucrats, as well as judges. A minor boy who is raped by an adult woman can be forced to pay her child support. The same is true of an elderly man raped by a younger woman. Your grown children can collect child support from you and the mother if you are still married. A man who impregnates your wife and then marries her can collect child support from you. You can be forced to pay child support for your stepchildren. Your children’s savings can be counted as your income for assessing your level of child support if your name is on their bank account. Your name can be published in the newspaper, billboards, pizza boxes, etc., your car can be booted, and your passport, driver’s license, and professional licenses can be confiscated – all without any conviction or proof that you have failed to pay child support. There are many times more child support enforcement agents than drug enforcement agents. In the US, if you have an arrearage, it is a federal crime to leave your state, even to find work, or even to live in a different state than the mother (even if she moves). Your children’s mother can extort additional payments from you, in addition to the legally required payments, in exchange for letting you see your children. Your employer can reduce your wages, knowing that if you quit you will be subject to arrest for nonpayment of child support. They will also keep you away from anything you might steal. Child support levels are designed by private collection agencies and set by courts and enforcement agents, not legislatures (police making laws). Higher courts rule that child support enforcement measures are unconstitutional are simply ignored with impunity. If you are incarcerated for nonpayment of child support, you will not likely go to a prison (where you would have access to a clinic, library, recreational facilities, etc.), but instead to a chain gang or labor camp, with a reduced life expectancy. Upon release you will be unemployable and homeless. And all this is just child support. It does not include accusations of domestic violence and child abuse, parental alienation, experiences like Jeff’s, etc. These points and more are documented in my book, Taken Into Custod: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, chapter 3. It is difficult to argue with Jeff’s advice: Do not get married.

Do not get married.

Almost half of first marriages end in divorce. Then you get this.

Do not get married.