O is for Opportunity

This guy sat next to me at work, maybe a year ago, and one day he heard my story, and shared his with me. It is not an uncommon one... Starts with a dedicated family man (FM), brother of my co-worker (CW), and FM's opportunistic wife (OW). FM has kids with OW, and OW sees her road to eternal gravy opened up and takes him to the local 'Pump-and-Dump', aka the NJ Divorce Court. You would think that FM would just live in poverty and slavery for the rest of his life, but divorce creates so very many ways for women to steal money from men without any realistic chance of punishment that it boggles the mind.

See, FM gets called up to go to Iraq, and OW starts complaining she isn't getting her blood-money. CW, not wanting to see his brother get in trouble, or his niece/nephew suffer, starts paying her support directly. Some time goes by, and CW is able to contact FM (who was out of touch due to the nature of his work in the military) and FM swears he *is* paying. OW claims otherwise, and so CW, out of consideration again for his niece/nephew and to keep his brother (FM) from being immediately arrested upon his return, keeps paying OW. Finally FM returns from Iraq, and shows CW his check stubs. OW claims that she never received any money during the period. They look at going to court, but none of the payments were being made through probation, and there was no written agreement between OW and CW, so OW can and will claim that the payments to her were a gift. Also, if the thing goes to court, FM will pay both his and her court fees, which will easily come to $9,000, rendering the whole court proposition uneconomical.

So there is no punishment for, or repaying by OW. She has 'worked the system' and collected twice for what she probably shouldn't have received in the first place.

Ain't NJ Grand? Talk about your 'land of opportunity.'.

Oh, and let me say a little something about slavery. First step in slavery is to reduce someone's legal standing. Making them pay their abuser's legal fees, making their abusers immune to perjury charges, placing the burden of proof on them... And forcing them to turn over the fruit of their labor without any real ability to challenge need or justice, and all under threat of seizure, prison and punishment. Support is slavery, pure and simple.