Single fathers feeling trapped in one-sided system

This article hits the nail on the head!

My advice to any young Canadian man who is considering getting married and having children -- forget it, unless you are going to move to another country with male-friendly laws (definitely not the US, and not the UK either). Never get married. If you want to have sex with women, get a vasectomy, so you won't have any unexpected children. If you think you might at some point in the future change your mind about children, put some sperm in freezing storage.

I sort of how he feels, though I'm long past the point of wanting to take it out on myself that I'm getting bent over at gunpoint by thugs from DCSE.

I've had accounts closed due to child support. Its very unhandy when you try to setup an automatic payment arrangement with DCSE, and they simply take everything, and then demand your payment on top of. My bank wasn't even nice enough to let me keep the $12 left from the check I deposited into a closed account, and turned that over as well. It cost me as much in bank fees as DCSE took to resolve all of that; I'm just glad the rent cleared before they closed the account. I wish my utilities had, those bank fee's add up. Then to add gall to it, they threatened me with legal action for my automatic payment arrangement not going through when they were the ones that seized the account, AND I had to pay a fee to my bank because it didn't clear, AND deal with a county prosecutor (who thankfully saw this my way) who was presented it as a felony bad check case for DCSE's electronic draft. I haven't had a bank account since, and for awhile wasn't even able to open one because of it even after I paid off the checks, and bank fees.

My current battle with DCSE. I entered into a payment agreement at the threat of more extortion to try to pay of arrears generated when I was disabled. Of course, that they set it on imputed income, and I was able to continuously show I wasn't making anywhere remotely close to what I was assessed didn't matter. They still kept that order in place, even when I went back again. When I went back yet again, they finally modified it from the last date of file, but that left several years of debt that was wrongfully generated based on an assessment my income that was between 10x, and 300x my actual income depending upon the year involved. "Sorry, we can't fix it, you should have dealt with this earlier." was the reply. Some days dark humor is all you have left.

A few days before Thanksgiving I got a notice they were taking my license yet again. They've already taken my passport like some third world communist dictatorship. It isn't the first time I've battled this, and I'm sure it wont be the last. Okay, my last payment was a few days late. I think its pretty generous considering its 75% of actual income on a debt that I rightfully shouldn't owe most of to begin with. So I've been trying to negotiate with them for a month to get this resolved, and just getting to the person with the actual power to do something useful, and getting them to call you back is a battle royale.

Of course they counter with an offer that is 1.5x my total income, and they know this is unreasonable, but I'm wondering why they are being so; even by draconian DCSE standards, difficult, and pulling a number out of the air so ridiculous.

Then I notice that the payments are going into "current". My support order stopped years ago, but since someone applied it to current, it shows the order active, and generating more debt the entire time I've had the payment arrangement in place. So they took my license because I wasn't compliant with an order that hasn't been in place for years, and can't even get back to me to fix it within a reasonable time frame. So it wasn't due to a slightly late payment, it was due to a clerical error on their part. Of course now I have to worry that anything I've paid will disappear into a black hole, and never get paid toward arrears. Worse still, because its handled by two different departments at DCSE, the one that has the power to reinstate my payment agreement wont because of the "failure to pay current support". I hope this hasn't generated more paper debt that gets translated to actual debt, or disappear down the black hole never to be applied to the arrears.

I was told maybe they'll get around to it on Monday or Tuesday, but this still leaves me in a lurch, no license, and whatever else they already have spinning. I feel like I can't win with these folks, and just long for the day I can get out from under them. Well, no, it isn't my first thought, my first thought is that I feel like dealing with it with a molotov, but as one person you can't fight everything alone.

Its all economies of scale. At one point in my life the figures involved would be merely an annoyance, but these days it seems almost insurmountable when I can't get the slightest bit ahead without them reaching into my pockets again, or trying to turn me into a criminal.