Forcing Father to pay for Child Support is unethical, when the money that is being paid is neither intended nor required for the benefit of the child. As an example,
evaluate this following specific case:
1) A Man (lets call him X) married a woman (lets call her Y) and lived together
for 7 years during which she gave birth to one boy (lets call him Z). Both of
them were well educated and at some point in their careers earned six figure
incomes.
2) X provided reasonable assets to her and to child (Z). All through their
marriage, Y had access to a car, had access to a credit card of an average
usable balance of $5000. Y did not ever have to pay for any of the household
expenses, even though she was working for some time. Her savings were used
for purchase of big ticket items or white goods and she always insisted to
have all such items registered in her name.
3) Y had a habit of stealing (shoplifting) that X discovered after some time.
It was not too intense but every now and again, he would spot her eating a
chocolate bar or dry fruits at super markets without paying for them first.
X would chide or prevent Y from doing so or pay for what she has already
eaten to gently get her out of the habit. She was definitely not in desperate
need of money or food.
4) Few years after Z was born, Y was forced to stay at home. She was getting
bored and frustrated. In her boredom/fear, she started to threaten to kill Z
to make herself free to work again. X was shocked to hear her threats and before
he knew what was happening, Y forged X’s signature to rob over $100,000 from
their joint savings that was set up as an offset account against the mortgage
of their matrimonial home.
5) X promptly made a police complaint. In retaliation against his complaint,
Y fled from home with Z away from their matrimonial home and started leaving
with someone else.
6) After the police complaint, the whole world of deception crawled out of the
wood-works. As X discovered to his horror, Y had been seeing few another men
behind his since past few years.
7) All of these additional parties (men and other acquaintances of Y) started
approaching X when he was alone to either sweet talk him into withdrawing his
forgery police complaint. Y was not prepared to return the money and although
police has frozen her bank accounts, most of the funds had already been withdrawn
before the complaints was registered.
8) X was systematically subjected to mental violence and abuse to force him to
withdraw his police complaint. He was yelled, cajoled, invited for dinners (that were canceled on last minute), ridiculed, called names, treated as insane, etc…
and so on.
9) Social workers were inept at handling complaints from X, although there were
few of them who could empathize with the pain of X.
10) X was systematically treated with good cop/bad cop routine. He lost his sleep
and started having problems in all aspects of life: Work, Driving, Friends,
Cooking … His immediate family was living too far and got into their own
health and age related problems and were not capable of reaching out to him.
11) Eventually, he was forced to quit from his job after he almost caused a
disaster.
11) Matters reached the family court during which the systematic abuse of X continued. Y never returned any of the stolen money but somehow managed to
create an illusion that she had returned the $100,000. Due to high interest
in the interim, the house was foreclosed and sold off.
12) X could see through the illusion of money that was returned, but did not
have any money to hire a lawyer who could defend him. He was not eligible for
legal assistance since he used to have good job not long ago. He did not have
adequate knowledge or skills to defend himself. Moreover, X was leaving with
someone in a caravan park and sold off his good car to pay for his day to day expenses.
13) In the court settlement under “NO FAULT” banner, Y managed to garnish
another 70% of the joint marital property. She had secretly transferred all
of her assets into her sister’s name before separating so as to ensure that
only assets that formed part of court settlement were almost exclusively
belonging to the X.
14) After property settlement and with whatever little that came to X’s way,
he reeducated himself and started working again albeit at lower income levels.
He is now driving a small and old car that he belongs to one of his friends.
15) After he started working, Child support collectors have pounced upon him
and still harassing him on continous basis.
16) Y on other hand is living with a new man in really expensive suburb. As it
turned out, her new friend is successful businessman who was married to a
childhood schoolmate of Y. Y’s boyfriend was not living with his wife because
she had relocated to go to different city for expanding her business
six months ago. Before Y’s involvement in her friend’s marriage, they were
planning to reunite after business expansion had been accomplished.
17) Y has also started working on her profession and is now earning income that
is equivalent or more than what X is making. However, she presents documents to
Child Support that she is earning minimum wages by working part-time in her
business.