Digging a hole
When we last left off on the child support / arrears story, asshat was doomed to meet with a process server in order to be served with a notice of debt…
Since I hadn’t heard anything lately, I filled out the form online to find out what was happening with the arrears last week. A woman named Michelle called me today to talk to me about the status.
She told me that asshat had spoken with an agent and they had come to the agreement and they would not be collecting any more money from him due to his severe financial hardship. She told me that the agent had made this decision, and that she was just relaying the information to me. She said that asshat had talked about filing for bankruptcy, and has another small child he’s supporting.
I said, “another child? He doesn’t have any other children.”
Michelle said, “He doesn’t have another child with another woman?”
I said, “No, he doesn’t. His girlfriend has a daughter….”
Michelle interjected and said, “Well that must be the child he’s supporting.”
I said, “The girlfriend, her ex-husband and their daughter all live together. That’s how she’s being supported, by both her parents living together.”
Michelle said “The girlfriend and her ex husband live together? That’s weird.”
I agreed and pointed out the asshat had a vasectomy 13 years ago, there’s no way he has other children.
MIchelle asked twice more, “he doesn’t have any other children?” then she took this information down with a surprising amount of disbelief. “I’ll be sure to get this information to the agent to see if he’d like to reconsider the decision. This isn’t right.”
I agreed that it wasn’t right and then mentioned that he and the girlfriend were currently in Europe, and would be there for 3-4 weeks. “Europe?! how is he able to do that?” I said I didn’t know. She asked what they were doing there, I said I didn’t know, but the email he sent me said they would be traveling around Europe. “Well that doesn’t sound like financial hardship to me.”
I agreed. Michelle wanted to know when they left. I told her on Sunday. “He emailed you this?” she asked, her disbelief was becoming comical.
I said, “Yes he did.” I opened the email and read it to her.
“I don’t normally give people my email address, but can you send that email to me?”
I said, “of course.” and forwarded it along.
“Oh! i got it!” she said. “I’ll send all of this information along to the agent and we’ll see about getting him to reconsider this agreement. We’ll see what we can do to get him to pay you that five thousand dollars.”
I told her that I really appreciated her help.
She asked about his legal studies, as asshat had given that sob story about needing to study for the bar exam to the agent. I told her that he’d graduated a few Januarys ago – and had taken the bar exam twice and failed it twice. “So he’s been graduated for more than a year?” Oh yes, he has.
She clarified with me where he worked and what he did there. She seemed quite flustered by the end of the phone call. I don’t know if it was the first time a State of Maine employee realized they’d been duped by a deadbeat trying to get out of paying child support – but that is what it seemed like. She was clearly angry and frustrated, but hopefully that will work to my benefit.
Looking Forward 