A letter to the New York City Office of Child Support Enforcement

Human Resources Administration
Office of Child Support Enforcement
2 Washington Street
New York, NY 10004
Attn.: Frances Pardus-Abbadessa, Deputy Commissioner

Dear Ms. Pardus-Abbadessa:

This is in response to your condescending form letter to me dated December 24, 2007, in which you thank me for supporting my own child.

It never occurred to me, in my daughter's eleven years, not to support my child. In 2002 I was hauled into family court by a vindictive ex-spouse over a single bounced check and subjected to mistreatment and ridicule at the hands of an unscrupulous family court judge. Since then, my paycheck has been garnished every two weeks. There have been numerous errors, no corrections have been made, and no apologies have ever been offered. Last year, my ex wife helped herself to a "cost of living increase" and they are now taking out even more. Multiple attempts to recover the overpayments through administrative audits have been a complete failure and waste of time.

Your administration has come close to bankrupting me. At various periods of time you have forced me to buy groceries with credit cards, eat rice and beans at home while watching my daughter's mother take trips to Paris -- twice -- and even to become homeless for a brief period.

When I think of all the holidays you've ruined and all the things my child and I have gone without so that my daughter's mother can collect $359 every two weeks, tax-free, it makes my blood boil. Still, I had been reconciled with the idea of some third party playing fast and loose with my hard-earned money. I considered it a difficult lesson in good judgment, and have resolved never to have another child in the State of New York.

But that was before you had the chutzpah to write and thank me for all my hard work, commitment, and dedication. So now you're getting a good solid piece of my mind.

Of the real sacrifices I have made for my little girl and her care, you have no idea. They are off your radar screen and, I suspect, your understanding. They have to do with compassion, nurturing, patience, and giving of myself. You cannot put a price tag on these, Ms. Pardus-Abbadessa, and therefore I'm afraid you would consider them worthless. Yes, there is a relationship, and yes, my daughter loves me even though I cannot buy her much with the money I have left over after you people have taken your blood money. But she loves me all the same. Perhaps one day she will grow up to be a lawyer. If she does, I hope she plays a part in dismantling the OCSE and this whole corrupt, inhumane system.

Child support enforcement as it is currently practiced is illegal under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Continuing to reach into the pockets of hard-working fathers in order to enrich single mothers, and to bankroll the machinery that makes it work, amounts to treason and a violation of international law. You may say you are only implementing a Federal mandate, and you would be technically right. But Nuremberg has taught us that obeying orders is not an excuse for human rights violations and illegal actions. Your actions, and those of your administration, amount to grave crimes against humanity. I pray every day that God will one day call you to task for the suffering you have created.

You ask if there is anything you can do to assist me. Get out of my family life now, and let me raise my child according to my own means and ability.

In case there's any doubt, I would prefer that you not insult me again by thanking me for doing what any responsible parent would do for their child. If you have any other sort of response, please be advised that it will be posted on my public blog, http://breadandwine.org. I have used this outlet to chronicle child support abuses, both in New York and in other states. You can read this entry on the site and post a comment there also, but either way, your response will be posted. Also note: While I won't mind a response in writing, I will consider any subsequent adverse change in my child support arrangement to be retaliatory in nature, and a further violation of my civil rights, and may take legal action as a result. All correspondence from your office, and all actions taken are, and will continue to be, part of a journalistic chronicle aimed at exposing your injustices and abuses to the clear light of day.

I will not call the customer service representatives, as they have never been very much help. They cannot add or subtract, which makes it difficult for them to assist in solving problems. They seem to serve no function other than to waste busy parents' time.

Yours in the hope of a better future for New York's families,


Jeffrey Zeth

Stop It Now

To the Virginia Dept of Health:
When my daughter was born prematurely, I would place my thumb into her hand for her to squeeze as she lay in her isolette. When she recovered and came home from the hospital, I would hold and kiss her hand often. After she learned to walk, we could frequently be seen walking hand-in-hand down our street.

My daughter will turn eleven this summer. I see her two nights every week, every other weekend, and for two weeks in the summer. I have told her she doesn't have to hold my hand when we walk down the street, but she insists. At times I've wondered how it looks to other people to seea 10-year-old girl holding her father's hand, but this doesn't occupy my mind for very long. I'm more concerned about what feels right for her than about what other people think.

I find the latest advertisement from the Virginia Department of Health deeply offensive and hurtful. It is offensive to any man who has a nurturing relationship with a child, because it implies that any father who shows physical affection to his child should be labeled a potential sexual predator. It is hurtful because it twists an innocent gesture of affection between a father and child into something that would make most fathers turn pale. Fathers are not by definition pedophiles, but your ad asks viewers to think of all physical affection shown by fathers as an indication of sexual abuse.

Some find your ad ridiculous. I do not consider it funny or ridiculous. I am extremely uncomfortable with the climate of fear that sex abuse and domestic violence advocates are creating. You are creating a McCarthyist environment that may one day drive a permanent wedge between fathers and their children, and which will ultimately be damaging to men's relationships with ALL children. Sex abuse is a problem, but to imply that sex abuse by fathers is of epidemic proportions is both inaccurate and unhelpful.

Please stop smearing fathers. Stop It Now.

Jeffrey Zeth

Deadbroke dad sues Tennessee child support collections system

It's a common scenario: a divorced dad running his own business gets into financial trouble, and gets hopelessly behind in his child support payments. The state collections apparatus goes after him with everything but guns. When his arrearages reach a certain point they hit him with criminal contempt charges. When he still doesn't pay, they throw him in jail. Even though the charges have now reached the status of a crime, no one ever reads him the Miranda warning or gives him other rights due to other criminals. He's sentenced to jail time.

This guy has the nerve to fight back. The convictions are overturned, but Bryan Cottingham doesn't stop there. He sues the child support pimps who turned his life into a living hell.

I don't know about you, but I think Cottingham should be a candidate for some type of men's rights award. He is a national hero and, if his suit is successful, it just might serve to discourage the predatory types of collection practices that have turned fathers into wage-slaves and second-class citizens.

Overheard in Brooklyn

There were a few things I wanted to say in honor of Father's Day 2007, but I'll choose just this, in honor of those fathers who can't be with their kids this weekend.
Sometime around late May 2007, I'm waiting for a bus. At the stop with me is a 30-ish looking Latin man and a little girl. The girl is crying.
"I want to see you next weekend."
"You can't, sweetie. I'll be in the Dominican Republic."
"I want a daddy weekend."
"I'm going to the D/R. You don't want to come with me to the D/R, do you?"
She stops crying, looks him straight in the eye, and says "Yes". A full "yes", not "yeah", or "OK". Y-E-S.
There is a long pause. This is clearly not the answer he expected. But she's standing there in front of her dad, fully prepared, at least at that moment, to go with him to some strange place.
"Well, you can't," he says finally.
"WHY??" she says, her lower lip sticking out.
"Well, uh..."
Another long pause.
"Well, because, uh..."
She folds her arms in front of her in a strangely mature posture. She's got a shit detector like Hemingway, this one.
"Well, the mosquitoes are gonna bite," he says.
She considers this for a moment, arms folded. Then she starts crying again.

Louisiana legislature rejects child support bill

Lawmakers in Louisiana just killed a bill that would have held parents responsible for child support until the age of 23, if the child is in college.

Ready the story.

I think this bill was a mistake. In fact, it didn't go far enough. Parents not living with their kids should be financially responsible for them until they reach the age of 35. After all, what if a child wants to go to graduate school after college? In fact, what if the whole "career" thing doesn't work out at all? Parents have a responsibility to their children. A parent's wages should be garnished if he doesn't pay voluntarily. If he doesn't like it, he should have thought twice about having a child in the first place.

Of course, mothers who don't want their newborn babies should still have the right to bring them to drop-in centers, never to see them again, no questions asked.

Oh, and abortion rights should be extended post-birth, at least until the child reaches the age of 18. We must all support a woman's right to choose, musn't we?

Sperm donor pays child support to lesbian couple

A sperm donor who helped a lesbian couple conceive two children is liable for child support under a state appeals-court ruling that a legal expert believes might be the first of its kind.

A Superior Court panel last week ordered a Dauphin County judge to establish how much Carl L. Frampton Jr. would have to pay to the birth mother of an 8-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl.

Read the story

Woman indicted in alleged scheme to get child support

ALBUQUERQUE — A grand jury has indicted a woman accused of pretending she'd had a child and bilking her former husband out of more than $26,000.
The Bernalillo County grand jury last week indicted Viola Trevino, 54, on 24 counts, including kidnapping, perjury, conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit forgery.

Read the story

The equal parenting bike trek

A reader sends word about an upcoming event:

"I am trying to spread the word about the following:

Click Here...

....and I hope that other members of the male-friendly web community will do likewise. This event - The Equal Parenting Bike Trek - could make a serious propaganda splash. And that is what politics is all about. Publicity is what we sorely need, and this is a chance to hit feminism hard in a strategic area where it will be felt throughout the entire organism.

The event will take place in the USA, but since our politics is international in scope, the eye of the world ought to be upon it..."

More here...

Thirty-two college students

I'm growing weary of documenting the slaughter of our children and young adults. Until now, though, most of the deadliest school shootings have been committed by people who were able to articulate rational complaints, however misguided. Harris and Klebold knew what they were doing, and did it to redress perceived wrongs and injustices. There was a whole string of school shootings in the late 1990s -- almost all of them committed by kids who knew what they were doing, were able to state why, and at times even sent out warning signs. If you want to go back even further, there was Marc Lepine, the Canadian psychopath enraged at women who were admitted to engineering school. Their crime was having the guts to step out of the barefoot-pregnant-in-the-kitchen role and dare to try making careers for themselves.

However, by now it appears that the Virginia Tech shooter had schizophrenia. His targets were chosen 100% at random, and he never articulated any clear complaints against anyone. This may make it more difficult to give the tragedy some meaning: the Canadian engineering students, for example, were symbols of women's progress; the Columbine tragedy started a whole debate about the effects of bullying in high schools. The deaths were horrific and shocking, but led people to ask tough questions about what changes could be made to make our schools safer, and about our responsibility, as adults, to all children and young adults.

Cho Seung-Hui had a history of psychiatric problems. He was 23 years old, around the age when people with schizophrenia first begin to get symptoms. His creative writing teacher expressed concern over a play he wrote. He was apparently hospitalized in 2005, and it's unclear whether he ever followed up with treatment after his discharge (probably not). We can't really blame the perpetrator for a mental illness that shredded his perception and judgment just as thoroughly as cancer rips apart the immune system.

Of course all the gun nuts will say that this would never have happened if everyone in the school was armed to the teeth, and the gun control nuts will argue that we need to make guns much harder to get. Charles M. Madigan, in my opinion, gets the balance exactly right. Without greater attention to mental health issues, it's hard to see what could possibly be done to prevent this sort of tragedy in the future. An increased awareness of emotional literacy in the classroom, and maybe training educators on how to detect psychosis would probably help a lot. We can't make every writing teacher or computer science professor a mental health clinician, of course. But the symptoms of psychosis are not that difficult to detect, and by now it's clear that our shooter's social isolation and preoccupation with violence sent up red flags to anyone around him who cared to look. It should not have taken a shooting rampage to get people to pay attention to someone who was holding his own academically but who clearly needed help in just about every other area of his life.

Our hearts go out to the victims' families in this horrible disaster.

A timeline of recent worldwide school shootings

Attorney General in Michigan charged with racketeering

Michigan's attorney general Mike Cox has been hit with racketeering charges stemming from a mishandled child support enforcement case. Robert R. Parker, Jr., a father and former child support obligor, claims he was alienated from his daughter from the time she was two years old. He was covered under a state law exempting parents wrongfully denied visitation from making child support payments, but the State went after him anyway, defrauding him of more than $15,000.

Also named in the suit is Gennesse County's former Friend of the Court, Jennie E. Barkey.

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