A dad wrote to Reddit about his 4-year-old daughter, and the story reads like a receipt with a pulse.
He pays his ex $1,200 a month in child support. Since she had twins with her fiancé at the start of this year — twins who are almost a year old now, after she and the fiancé broke up — his daughter started showing up to his house unbathed, in dirty clothes, with no bag. Second child. Then third.
He asked how she’s broke on $1,200 a month. She said one twin has medical issues, the other needs a special formula, and the money goes fast on groceries. He told her to put the twins’ father on child support. She said he left the country. He looked the man up — he’s traveling through Australia.
Then she missed a pickup, said getting the kids in the car was too stressful, and threatened to get his payments raised because he got a promotion. So he filed for full physical custody. And got it. His support dropped to $600, and his daughter is with him.
Now she says he stole their daughter because she’s poor. People they both know call him petty. He’s starting to feel bad about it.
Here’s the part that ends the argument. Child support is not a household budget. It’s not rent for the house the kid visits. It’s money for THAT child — food, clothes, a bag on her back when she walks through the door. The moment it starts covering two other children and a man traveling through Australia, it stops being support and starts being a subsidy.
The court didn’t punish her for being poor. It moved the child to where the money was already going — to the kid.
She can call it stealing. The judge called it custody.
-SSM