The Child Support Felon

By Thomas Blackshear

This book is about my experience with the child support system in Ohio and how I met many obstacles dealing with the mother and the court system. It covers a fifteen-year battle with the mother and how it affected my family and my children's lives. Imagine being ordered to pay $1,200 a month for two children out of a monthly salary of $2,100 when you already are caring for an older child. Well that is what happened to me.

I write about the key points throughout the process where I defy and then try to cooperate with the court, which led to my being charged with a felony for nonpayment and then imprisonment after a plea agreement had been reached, which the court did not honor. I talk about my time in prison and some of how the system works. I also detail how this affected my children, who were trying to establish a relationship with me before and after I got out of prison.

At the end of the book, I write a proposal to change the child support system from one that is punitive to one that is a cooperation between parents that can eliminate the court completely based on what I tried to establish in my relationship with the mother. I offer a plan that will hopefully bring fathers back into their children's lives by presenting a solution that is focused on the child instead of being punitive to a parent.

This book is needed now because not only does it affect the people of lower income like myself, but I often hear rich celebrities complain about how the child support system needs to be changed. The object of the book is not only to make the system equal for both parents but to also keep fathers in the lives of their children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684984336

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The Child Support Felon

Thomas Blackshear

Copyright © 2022 Thomas Blackshear

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-68498-430-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68498-433-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Relationships

Chapter 2

My Early Life

Chapter 3

My First Child

Chapter 4

My True Love

Chapter 5

A Father Again

Chapter 6

The Breakup

Chapter 7

Child Support

Chapter 8

Obtaining Custody

Chapter 9

The Reunion

Chapter 10

Wanted: Deadbeat Dad

Chapter 11

2002: The Return

Chapter 12

Prison Life

Chapter 13

My New Home

Chapter 14

Halfway Home

Chapter 15

A Free Man

Chapter 16

The Resolution

To Dad, the best father a man could have.

Preface

I am writing this book in the hopes that it will change how people look at the inequalities in the child support system by telling my story of how I was mistreated by the system for just wanting to be a part of my children's lives. At the end of the book, I will propose a solution to hopefully change the system and make it fair for both parents. The goal is not to place blame on one parent or the other; it is to make parenting a cooperative venture between the two, which benefits the children.

The current system puts too much emphasis on the income of the parents. My proposal puts the emphasis on the needs of the child. I realize that what I am proposing will not work in all cases, and it will be met with opposition by those who benefit financially from the current system, but it will hopefully create an outline that makes for a more uniform way of dealing with the breakup of couples who have to raise children. After all, it's about the children, not the parents.

Chapter 1

Relationships

Let's be real. The current child support systems in this country amount to nothing more than legalized extortion. A parent can take, or is awarded custody by the court, a child who actually belongs equally to two adults. The noncustodial adult is then forced to pay an amount ordered by the court in order to see a child that is equally theirs. They are also told how often they can be with their child. That is the true definition of extortion. From this point on, in all of the conversations and examples I use, I will refer to the child to mean one or more children a couple may have. In most cases, I will refer to him to mean either a male or female child, as I don't want to refer to a child as it.

I can remember a man once telling me about the time his son tried to jump into an argument between him and his wife. He told his son, Boy, sit your ass down. This was my girlfriend before it was your mother. This is a very profound statement. As boys, we always think our parents, especially our mothers, are flawless. As we grow older and start to deal with relationships ourselves, we never look at what our parents may have gone through or why they couldn't stay together. One of my daughters said to me after she was grown that she didn't know what a healthy relationship was because her mom and I were such poor examples. I was speechless because it was true.

Let's first take a look at the inequalities when we are talking about how parents are viewed. In most relationships, when the parents separate, the man is looked at as the person who has to prove he deserves to be in the child's life, even if he has been there for years through marriage. Let's say there is a situation where one person is cheating. A woman can take the child and leave the relationship, but if a man takes a child and leaves the relationship, he may face kidnapping charges. He will be hunted down by the police as if he is a threat to the child, even if the mother is the one who was the cheater. He will have to prove he is not a threat, whereas a woman is automatically afforded protection if she takes the child and leaves.

When a man wants to obtain custody of a child, he must prove that the mother is unfit either physically or mentally in most cases. It doesn't matter if she is not working or cannot manage money; she is awarded custody. There are government resources to help her raise that child even if she is working. This can be in addition to what she may receive in child support from the father. Some women can make do with this help, but a lot of women will try to work two or more jobs to provide for their child. Some women won't seek any kind of help at all from the government or the father.

We have been conditioned by society to look down on a man when he leaves a relationship and does not pay court-ordered child support. Well, I have talked to a lot of fathers who just want to take care of their child without the intervention of the court, and a lot of them do. Of course, that depends on the relationship that they have with the mother. I love it when I hear that both parents are working together to raise their child without the court interfering. So what happens when the parents can't work together? Again, the court looks at the father as the guilty party, and as I mentioned earlier, he will have to prove that he is trying to be a part of his child's life.

The next thing is when one parent doesn't want to be or refuses to be a part of the child's life. This mostly happens because the woman got pregnant during a fling where the two got together just for sex. It doesn't matter how long they had been seeing each other or why; they just weren't committed to each other to the point where they were looking to create a life. Or maybe one party was ready, and the other one wasn't. Society will usually blame the man for not wearing a condom, which he should have done if he wasn't ready, but a woman should have also protected herself if she wasn't ready. In fact, a woman has many more choices to protect herself from getting pregnant than a man does. It really doesn't matter what the reason was; you are both responsible for being irresponsible.

At this point, there is nothing a man can do to stop the pregnancy short of using violence, and I don't have to go into detail because you all know what I mean. The woman is now in full control of the life that is growing inside of her. A woman has choices, although the laws are changing where she soon may not have a choice. A man is now looking at either accepting this responsibility and pays child support, or he refuses. The stigma of child support is a daunting one because the system is not designed to treat the man equally; it is designed to force him to give up a substantial part of his income involuntarily or face jail time if he doesn't.

But what if he knew what his responsibilities are going to be based on a fair system? Maybe he would be willing to accept the child. I say this because even men who are rich and are able to pay court-ordered child support are sometimes unwilling to do so because they feel a judgment is not fair. I've actually heard of cases where a celebrity was ordered to pay less in child support than I was, and he refused to pay. Of course, these men should have used protection if they had no intent of having a child with