On Xitter this week, user @Mrsupershin blocked what was probably tens of thousands of accounts. The reason is still not completely clear, but it was allegedly over a spat with @285slim about him being $9,000 in child support debt. This is quite likely the case when he was also found to have xweeted about his anticipation for the end of the election so that the real issues, like child support abuse, can be addressed, and complained that even though child support is not a federal issue, they can take federal income tax. I mean, neither are state taxes and they can garnish your wages for those, too. He also rexweeted the account @officialfbma that stated “It may sound extreme, but consider a federal mandate for DNA testing of newborns. With paternity fraud at 30%, it poses a significant threat to generational wealth.”
This 30% paternity fraud statistic is widely repeated on the internet, but anyone with a brain would know not to believe just anything they read on the internet. Think about it: if this statistic were true, that means almost every one out of three people you meet is not biologically related to their father. Whenever statistics are repeated, context gets skewed. Sure, paternity fraud is technically almost 30%, but according to Susan Ayres at Texas A&M Law, that statistic is based on paternity confidence. In about 30% of cases where there was unsureness of paternity, the man was not the father, but with men tested who had high paternity confidence, that rate was about 2-3%.
There is no widespread conspiracy to get men to pay for children who are not theirs.
According to the U.S. Census, the average monthly payment for child support in 2021 was $441 ($513.15 adjusted for inflation), which does not cover much. One of the wildest things to witness is when parents who already don’t have to pay much relative to their income still complain when asked to cover unexpected expenses.
Is your child not worthy of your extra?
Additionally, too many parents think that child support is a substitute for spending time and giving affection. That legacy the other parent thinks they are building, simply because they might have the same last name, can only go so far without a genuine connection. Parents who parent with the bare minimum are shocked when their children grow up to have the same attitude toward them. Parents who think that their payments cover their entire duty as a parent are wildly inconsiderate to their children’s needs and are crazy to think that a child does not feel that, or that is not indicative of how they parent as a whole.
Obviously, every child support case is different but it is highly unlikely that the system is screwing all of these people by making them pay for their kids; not saying systems don’t screw people, but having your money go to your kid or even worse to the person who is taking care of your kid isn’t really the most diabolical plan imagined. People get so worked up thinking that their coparent, the one who has to do the majority of financial, physical, mental, and emotional sacrifices, might do something nice for themselves with that big $441, they might even buy some Trident Layers.
Super producer Mustard and his wife Chanel Thierry, with whom he shares three children, have recently split. She is reported to receive a lump sum of $315,000 and $24,500 a month. “It doesn’t cost that much to raise a kid” is often the battle cry of many wounded commenters as they throw themselves on the pyre for a man worth an estimated $20 million. Twenty-four thousand five hundred dollars a month for an entire year is still less than 1.5% of his entire wealth. It’s always a wild thing to see in real-time: poor people complaining about rich people spending money on their kids. Many of the same people they are defending live extremely extravagant lifestyles and spend ridiculous amounts of money on things that depreciate faster than the smile on a disappointed child’s face. For the sake of the children, larger amounts are granted when one parent makes a lot of money because it unfairly skews the child’s experience with their parents. If a child is going to a mega-mansion on the weekends and a two-bedroom apartment throughout the week, they obviously are going to prefer living in the mega-mansion full-time, which may not be the best for the child. More importantly, why would a parent even want that? Rich people are very well aware that if they have children, they will be required to pay child support upon the dissolution of a relationship.
Having children is not a requirement; you can protect your assets by protecting yourself.
Also, even if you don’t have primary custody, your children should still feel at home. If you live close and see them often enough—hell, they should still feel at home regardless—they deserve a designated space with both parents. If your child sees you often enough and you can afford it, why do they not have their own room or their own clothes at your home? Why do they have to pack a bag to spend time with you? Why do they have to prepare for you to parent? Your child visiting you should not feel like a sleepover. Does giving child support mean your child is unworthy of you facilitating care in your space as well? Are they not worthy of your extra? Xitter user @Lbuddy84 once twote, “My daughter is 13 now and I’m debating if I should tell her about the child support she receives…When is a good time to introduce that?” When is a good time to tell your daughter if she is worth what it costs to raise her? That is such a crazy thing to even conceptualize. Your 13 daughter is more than likely aware that it costs money to raise her and that you are giving some of it.
My daughter is 13 now and I’m debating if I should tell her about the child support she receives…. When is it a good time to introduce that…?
— Agave Buddy (@Lbuddy84) September 26, 2024
Recently, Erica Mena and Safaree have been dragging each other through the mud on social media over child support. Both people are a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Erica should be embarrassed that she used a ladder to climb over his fence and then had her child walk through the debris of her emotional breakdown. Safaree should be embarrassed that not only did he release the footage recently, which was reportedly from 2023, but he did it because he didn’t think his children were worth how much it costs to raise them. Save that footage for the courts. If people are going through financial hardships, they should absolutely be granted lower payments but both being set on embarrassing their children’s other parent over money is gross.
Are there parents who abuse the system? Sure, and by abusing the system, there are parents who don’t spend enough of what they receive on the child, but that is much more the exception than the rule. There are also people who abuse the system by not reporting their income. If the system were so dedicated to screwing the parent with less physical custody, then there wouldn’t be so many struggling single parents.
If people are really concerned that their funds are being abused and their children neglected as a result, there would be way more 50/50 custody arrangements and way fewer every other weekend parents who live in a one-bedroom.