Flippant Remarks about California Child Support Calculations

Bottom line: When you want to reduce costs, you have to spend 40 or more percent with your child. You do the political math: when you want to use political speech, you can say that the government ‘wants’ you to spend more time with your children (even though the qualities of life designed by these same politicos effectively discourage this).

The most common corruption for impoverished women (of any complexion/class) is taking support payments and spending it on things other than their children. You can encounter furious denial and indignation when one (especially males) confronts this reality directly. What is worse, is when the mother gives your child support money (indirectly or directly) to the broke-down, punk-ass man she is married to—or just shacking up with… (How can one tell that this is happening? —whenever her “man” is sitting in her crib and is unemployed—sometimes for years.) This *f’*ed up situation is not my personal experience but very close to other fathers in my family…

Reducing Net Income with a 401K: This has very little effect on the support calculation… It can be on the order of only one hundreds of dollars here in the state of California…

Quitting your job: I have seen young brothers from the ’hood do this to avoid payments—but you are going to need your mother (or equivalent sugar momma) to take you in for this one… and the bill comes later, brother…

You need about 12 full days per month with your children to get that 40% sweet spot. These work to increase the heaviest weight in the support calculation:

• Driving your child to and from school—this can add almost one full day per month of child interaction. You and your little ones can enjoy commute music—so bring some educational tunes like Stevie Wonder’s Livin’ for the City. This driving-to-school thing might evolve into your child spending four or five week days with you—especially when the child is older.

• Don’t quit your job but take your children on annual (or even bi-annual) vacations. (This means you can’t take your skank-whore-on-the-side with you.) Even when “vacation” means sitting at home, staring at walls, this yearly event should increase your average time spent with your children. Assuming your ex is not a total devout worshipper of bitchcraft, she should not protest against this yearly contribution. What would be truly revolutionary is to see gangs of low-income fathers get together to hustle up a group discount on some kind of vacation villa/cabin to share the burden of visitation costs and increase their percentages. Live-Beat Dad Camp!

• Take full weekends for some (or all) months. (This means you can’t spend time with your skank-whore-on-the-side on these weekends.) Full weekends alone give you about 25% time monthly—which is not enough but just count the hours so-called happily married couples spend with their children. This move also implies that you have prepared children-living-space for your children—instead of man-cave digs.

• Hire agents that ‘represent’ your parenting time. I am not a family law expert but it would totally be f’ up to find that hiring other people (like, say, a nanny, a driver, or a music instructor) to represent your parenting time does not count as your parenting time. One argument against me is that the “custodial parent” can hire these people just as well—with my child support money. For example, my eldest son learned how to play the piano and I had nothing to do with hiring the piano teacher.Here are some lower (lower)-middle-class realities that prevent fathers (like me) from reaching the 40% mark (or higher):

• You hooked up with a skank-whore drama queen lifestyle with weed, late night hours in public and everything. This lifestyle prevents you from spending time with your children. You like that shit. That shit is on you.

• You have to go to work every week day and your commute prevents you from being able to drive your child to school. Here you can attempt to reduce your hours by negotiating with your employer—not exactly a cultural phenomenon for fathers here in the U.S.

• You can’t afford to spend more time with your children—just like the “happily married” two-parent-working households out there in “normal” America. The whole point of a communal relationship is to reduce capitalist costs: a marriage is supposed to help you save money. My being wrong about this intended side effect of marriage is yet another reason why I’m not married.

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