Retired New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan recent skermishes in divorce court serve to underline why there need to be changes in the child-support laws—and I have come up with the perfect solution. It’s a fact: men that make a lot of money get taken to the wash in divorce court, and that makes sense to me: if your wife is a (quantifiable) partner in your success, then she should be compensated for that investment. Quantifying that investment is complicated, but no matter: alimony, in a lot of cases, is warranted.
People that say ‘the child support solution is to wear a condom’ are generally pretty stupid people who would have you believe they were born in a manger with Three Wise Men bringing gifts. 85% of us were not planned. Most of us were conceived in the back of someone’s car or, like me, on a couch in my grandmother’s basement. The only reason she keeps the couch, she says, is because I was conceived on it. How about that?
Well, that’s another matter entirely.
Re: child support, men should pay up, because the purpose of child support is to provide care to child long after a relationship or marriage has been terminated. That makes all the sense in the world. The vast majority of mothers need this money to make ends meet and support them while they try to make a go of it, single-parent-stylee. I’m down with that. What’s confusing to me is the idea that support should somehow make the child’s life on-par with the father’s life. Nah. These laws are antiquated, and assume that women don’t cake like men do. If Mommy is losing like that, and we want the kid to live like Daddy—>shrugs<—I say Daddy should be given custody. That makes more sense to me.
Most often, the amount paid to the mother seems to be more about adult support than child support, and it’s not uncommon to see mothers riding fine, iced down, and find your seed out there in holey shoes and moth-eaten Old Navy gear, eating pot-pies for dinner. The women sometime don’t work, and child support becomes their primary income. And there is no way to know how much of that is being used for her upkeep, and not the kids. So how do we fix that?
Child support should not be based on the income of the father—that’s ludicrous. That’s basically encouraging women to use children like paychecks and lay back. And if you need child support to survive, again, you should consider giving custody to the father. I think there should be a different formula for determining child support that encourages all parties involved to be responsible parents.
The Ultimate Child Support Solution goes like this:
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September 18th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 14 comments