Another waste of time
I don’t know how I forgot to write about this before…but I did. At the end of September I came home to a letter from the Department of Support Recovery and Enforcement requesting my presence at a hearing in October.
Every state is different, but in this state if either parent thinks that Dept of Support Recovery and Enforcement isn’t doing their job, they can request a hearing. Normally this is when one parent wants the other parent to pay their part of raising a child. The other parent ignores requests from the Dept of Support Recovery and Enforcement for income and asset information. Eventually, the Department determines what the likely income and assets are for the other parent, and issues a notice to that parent of their new obligation to pay child support. The other parent says “No no no, you have it all wrong. I don’t make enough money to pay this kind of support!” At which time, they would request a hearing to say that the Dept of Support Recovery and Enforcement has acted inaccurately. The hearing is usually when the other parent will give the Dept the information they wanted from the beginning.
Our reason for a hearing was different. Dummy thought that the Dept had acted inaccurately by issuing him a notice of debt for his portion of his children’s medical expenses. The expenses that I send to him, and then to the Dept every 6 months.
Our case manager lady said she’d never been to a hearing for this reason before. She and I were on the same page with the understanding that the Dept issued the debt based on his court ordered obligation to pay 52% of all uninsured medical expenses. My paperwork was all in order, so really she didn’t understand what Dummy was really hoping to gain from this.
On the day of the hearing Husband and I went to DHHS to wait for our hearing. Dummy showed up wearing a giant polo shirt, shorts, sneakers, no socks and didn’t appear to have shaved or showered in days. He also was fatter than I’ve ever seen. He must be close to 400 pounds.
The hearing has an impartial party to hear both sides and collect evidence. In 3 weeks or so he would send us his written decision.
It was about an hour of Dummy yammering on about how my numbers didn’t add up, and according to HIS math, he doesn’t owe anything for braces now, that he’s paid his half. Also, D’s medication is TOO EXPENSIVE! He said some pharmacist told him about other medications that do ‘the same thing and are less than half the cost! Plus she’s not even getting the generic!”
Nearly the only thing I said during the whole hearing was, “We do buy the generic. And if there is a medication that is exactly the same, what dosage is it?”
He said “30mg”
I said, “Well he’s on 27 milligrams of this medication, so its clearly not the same. Plus, when I asked his doctor about this last week, she said that she felt it would do more harm than good to change D’s meds at this point.”
The guy was asking questions and scribbling. At closing statements Dummy announced that my paper work wasn’t accurate because I am a “billing expert” and some how used ‘accounting’ to my benefit.
Three weeks later we got a letter in the mail. It said what we thought it would. Dummy’s argument was not accurate. He still owes the full amount of the debt that he was issued.
What a waste of time.
Looking Forward 