I had an employee to whom I paid about $10 per hour. Good wages for the job he had.
He was a nice guy but did screw up and had a child out of wedlock.
The judge, female, ordered child support payments equal to his gross earnings, so he started going to jail every three or four months on a two to three week sentence for non-payment.
When he told the judge he obviously could not pay the whole amount each month she ordered him to get a better job, as if he was capable of that (he was not). He did have a second job but he did have to live somewhere and eat now and then. The judge did not care.
I didn’t think the judges could order child support calculated differently than the law allowed. I do know that the judge in my divorce took my ex’s word for what he made and later took his atty’s word for what he made but they demanded to see MY paystub to substantiate the insurance deduction. His W-2 is never looked at to see the bonus he gets every year (that dried up as soon as he was out of the house - bet me!)
There is a lot of injustice out there. Just because the mother of a child says a certain guy is the father doesn’t make it so - but that is the name on the birth certificate. If not married, I think it should be mandatory for blood type match minimum to determine the father. DNA is the guy still says he “didn’t do it”!
I also think that Pam Stenzel’s film about teenage sex should be shown in every school in the nation! “Sex has a price tag.”
When North Carolina first instituted a standardized system for child support about 9 years ago where support was paid to NC Child Support and then redistributed, they had a glitch in their system that put thousands of men in arrears even with the payments current on a personal level.
My ex and 18 year old daughter lived in South Carolina so I drove down there in a crane service truck to file for the emancipation of my daughter not knowing that there was a warrant outstanding for my arrest for NC's failure to pay support. Thanks to a sympathetic Clerk of Courts who explained the situation to me, I put a lot of road between the courthouse and myself until the situation resolved itself.