I normally don't involve myself in actual court cases between DH and BM. The last one they had was when we were getting married and DH was establishing visitation and custody rights. Anything else has been show causes for child support which is BM's manipulation tactic because they normally get thrown out.

This one was different. BM called CPS on us in DEC (which is why i have been absent). She said I beat my children til they fall, DH leaves them in the car to go grocery shopping. It was some other stuff but those were the biggest. I had been telling DH that BM was ramping up for some reason and thatvif he didn't try to contain it something would happen. She says she didnt call but the city clerk called because of what she wrote in her affidavit to reduce DH's visitation which was I'm rude amd unsafe with SD10, we don't feed her as punishment for snitching and force her ride without a seatbelt.

While she filed to reduce visitation she filed a show cause because she wants to pile as much as she can to intimidate DH. He normally folds but he is doing really well at holding his own this time. Plus I'm helping out because BM essentially tagged me in. Her allegations are seriously all over the place, never happened and insane. This woman is seriously bent in the head enough to risk my children in some BS that only happens in her head. 

The show cause for child support was yesterday and it was about a stalemate. BM said in mediation then repeated to the child support enforcement worker that she would drop the show cause and reduce the child support if DH agreed to drop sharing joint custody. The worker looked at her like she had 3 heads and told BM that even if DH had agreed to it that she would never allow that to be written because it was just wrong. BM started crying right there. 

Because they couldnt come to an agreement they had to go to court in front of the judge. This is where DH decided he no longer needed a foot and shot himself in it. BM had wrote that DH owed 11k in arrears when he only owed about 2k and had been on a plan with the state to pay them down. When asked about why she wrote such a large number she said the clerk told her (a lie because no city clerk of court can tell you what child support anyone owes. It's like going to DMV and asking how much does a person B pay for car insurance. Thats just not what they handle). When they bought up all his payments they had shown that while DH's payments weren't on the 1st every month, they were consistant and were paying down his arrears. 

When they asked DH about why he wasnt paying on the first he said that he had got new jobs (judge said that was voluntary but his jobs were through a toll where average use is about 2k a year. Its a real financial blight on our area) but they just never paid him like the one he had that mysteriously closed and was where his initial child support was based on. His last job he got fired from then started his own business and he could pay his support but just not on the first. The judge was fine with that because official policy is you have the whole month to pay it. The only thing is he didnt make a payment for last month (which i didnt even know about). So the judge said it seemed like he willfilully didnt pay anything and didnt have a plan to pay it was was going to give him 15 days. As explanation DH said he had work but couldnt work be ause he provided child care in the daytime. That's when he lost his foot. Because even I was sitting in the back knowing his dumb self was going to jail. I told him before we got that that courts dont care about providing child care and that it would seem like he was choosing to be a stay at home dad. I work in the daytime and am home with the kids in the evenings while he works but I dont get to be called a stay at home mom. Him staying with the kids in the daytime and working in the evenings shouldnt qualify him as a stay at home dad but the legal system just isn't set up for the way American life is right now. I knee Feb was a bad month for him work wise but i didnt know he hadn't paid. I feel bad because I realised in court that he didnt tell me because he didnt want to ask me for the money. We got hit with a large unexpected bill in FEB (had a gas leak) which depleted my reserves and took his money and I remember fussing at him because of the seriousness of the gas leak and how he needed to help me with that bill. I don't know why he didnt say that in court, I'm sure they would have made the connection that dying by a gas leak and killing the whole family was more important than child suport for the month especially because he had a plan to pay up for it this month but then again I'm not so sure. They probably would put him in jail for being in a coma for a month. 

He was going to get the 15 days unless he came up with $500. He didnt have $500 but I did so i paid it. First time for everything. But it came at the cost of the mortgage. So now we have to figure that out. I'm not too stressed because the same jobs he had to double up on support will be the same jobs he can do to finish the mortgage. 

The whole thing was just surreal. They kept talking about the welfare of his one child but didnt care what 15 days in jail would do to his other children. I don't know how you can admit in court to dropping child support for dropping joint custody and the judge say she doesnt care. In the end, our goals for the day were met, the show cause was dropped and we got an admission. That much should help when we go back to court at the emd of the month to show why the visitation should be decreased.