I hope that the new app will help divorcing couples to work through the divorce with less pain on both sides. But is what every party thinks that he or she wants?
I hope that the new app will help divorcing couples to work through the divorce with less pain on both sides. But is what every party thinks that he or she wants?
The number one thing to know about divorce with kids is that you lose control. They couldn’t stand that. The idea that the other person was 100% in charge of the kids.
They began making extremely vague allegations of how the other parent does unspecified “bad things” that need to be “reported.”
They eventually ended up believing their own propaganda and are convinced the other parent is abusing the kids on their days.
It’s a total mess.
The only debtor's prison there is in the US is the one for people with <50% custody. Therefore if the other parent makes claims of abuse, it's imperative you have counterclaims to make sure the other parent is in just as bad light to make sure you won't be subject to imprisonment at the whim of a judge at any misfortune you have.
The amount of people in county jail due to failure to pay child support is shocking. It is one of the best kept secrets in the jail system. The numbers are hidden since they are often bailiff arrests not integrated with sheriff stats [operates jails] under civil contempt. Once you are caught into this system and serve jail time you will most likely lose your current job. Thus begins a debtors spiral: Appear in court, can't pay, jail, release, appear in court, can't pay, jail - you will face ever increasing penalties and bizarre state punishments like having your drivers license suspended.
This system is particularly cruel to High cost of living / High paid individuals. EG. If you make 100k per year and finalize your divorce [lose house, 1/2 savings, 40k in lawyer fees, begin renting in high cost area, forced private school tuition] - alimony with child payments could be ~3k per month post tax. You might be able to swing this a few months. However, stress from the divorce could result in job loss. In the state of Florida for example, just being behind $2500 is a felony (they haven't updated their law). If you attempt to go to another state to find work it is considered fleeing (another felony).
It's hard to find evidence or tape of anything I said since cases are buried in confidential family courts, here is one example of an unrepresented person in the debt spiral. Watch until the end: jail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvOIdhJg1As
Fortunately it encouraged reform.
But neighboring states still issue automatic arrest warrants, and out state is required to serve then even though we are disgusted by it.
It’s always: young, impoverished black male with a warrant from a neighboring state.
Many local police are disgusted by it. But they don’t have a choice: warrants are warrants.
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19901216&slug...
Neither party cared about child support or alimony. Or money, at all.
Also, you’re not accurately describing how things turned out.
One of the parents wound up having very little custody time, and very little child support.
The unreasonably high stakes of “losing” a divorce case make it more like a no-holds barred cage match. I think America likes it this way because on some level it believes people must suffer for getting divorced.
We just both recognized that the process was about separating our lives, not resolving our feelings about one another. And that's pretty much always why it goes wrong - people want to use court proceedings as a substitute for therapy.
Completely agree. However, the underlying reason for many divorces is that they no long have the ability to cooperate or view things rationally.
Restraining orders are not easy to get either. It can take quite a lot of fight even in cases where actual stalking and threats of violence are going on.
Do you have a source for this? In my state, and many others, temporary protection from abuse orders against spouses are very easy to get just by saying the right things without any real evidence. Those stay in effect for a couple of weeks until a hearing. Then it's difficult to get them overturned unless you have physical proof because the course want to "err on the side of caution".
There are divorce lawyers who actually recommend filing false protection orders during divorce, for the very reasons stated by the previous commenter. It's well known amongst divorce attorneys that some in their profession do this. There is generally no punishment for those attorneys since you can't prove their involvement easily, nor for the false filer in many cases. After all, if your spouse is a felon (perjury) the courts will likely make you pay more in child support and alimony due to their limited earning potential.
Once officialdom realizes there is a divorce in progress, they become much, much, much less inclined to take sides.
The general attitude is: “You’re going through a divorce. We aren’t going to take your word for it. If we didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.”
This is a well known issue that may be more prevalent in some states than others, but is certainly a national issue.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/order-of-protection-and-j_b_9...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-worst-thing-a-woman-c_b_8...
I don't think thats how child support works in most states. Income shares model basically looks at the cost of raising a child in a particular jurisdiction then pro-rates that based on the parents income. For instance if the cost of child per month is 1k and the man earns 50k and the woman earns 100k (assuming woman has custody), the man would pay $333 a month (50 / 150 * 1k)
https://www.thebalance.com/how-child-support-payments-are-ca...
"OH look, you made $100k this year and have a masters in IT. You should be able to earn that forever to pay child support and/or alimony." ...is basically how it goes.
I know lots of people that are divorced, with partial custody. Most like the situation better than when they were married.
And I've practiced administrative law which, since they are not established under Article III of the Constitution, can be pretty cowboy and roughshod. I've also appeared in tribal court which seem to frequently take cues from TV courts. But they are not frivolous, not at all. Administrative hearings can and do determine the liberty of people every day. Same for tribal courts. There's something farcical about all 3 types of proceedings but family court just hits the perfect note of "legitimate", "important", and "farcical" to me, even though they are undoubtedly important. I can assure you that no immigration or NLRB hearings, the administrative courts in this country with teeth, sink into farce at a similar rate.
At one point there were some half-joking talks about finding an agreeable local tribe to partner with us to open a startup that allow same-day in-app divorces. Sadly even with introductions and approaching tribes in several states they all ended up saying no. There's a free idea for y'all, business-wise, if you can pull it off.
It won't. The people who fight over used dish soap and other petty things will continue to have issues.
The other part is people having an incorrect perception of what they are entitled to in a divorce. The app or a lawyer will be able to show them how wrong that perception is, but it won't dull the pain.
What would actually help is forming a prenup while both parties are happy, before vengeance, winning, or whatever emerges from the failed marriage.
The problem isn't the divorce process, it's the people involved, either the parties to the divorce or their attorneys.
Insert a gun into a frustrating situation for no reason. What an a-hole.
IMHO that's the main reason everyone having a gun with zero training is one of the stupidest things ever. People are dumb, people are brash, people make mistakes, people argue over everything. Why introduce a lethal component to every confrontation and bar fight? Because a piece of paper written 200 years ago says that it will be needed to protect the country doesn't really sound like a good enough reason for all the useless deaths.
But gun owners in US have this knee-jerk end-of-the-world reaction at any attempt to change anything, regardless of all the school shootings and overall ridiculously high murder rate. Tunnel vision that guns are the most important thing in the world and who doesn't restrict them is the best politician.
I lean in my opinions more towards right but due to this I would never ever be republican if I were in the US. Voting for the same people as vast amounts of bible belt gun nuts whose wet dreams are mostly about their property being invaded by some thugs (or anybody really) so they can finally defend themselves with one of the 50 guns they have mostly for this purpose, and the spend significant amount of time and money on preparing exactly for this scenario... that would be insulting.
I really cannot comprehend why there is no punishment for things like that.
Sure, was he at risk of the other person grabbing the gun? Probably. But why did he have to unnecessarily bring a firearm into a heated and emotional argument in the first place? What was supposed to happen?
It feels so psychotic to me, like taunting someone with the intention to bait them into their death. Those kids lost their parent for no good reason :(