Dear MUB,
I read the submission by my fellow single mother and want to add that I’m in partial agreement. However, I wish to add a bit more detail for those women wanting to go through the process, and maybe get an answer or two myself.
What no-one tells you is that for parents collecting child support the process takes two days… TWO DAYS. The deadbeat parent makes their payment and goes their merry old way, yet parents collecting have to go on day one to CHECK and see if the payment has been made and write their name on a clipboard so that the cheque can be issued. You then have to go the following day, after 10 am, to collect said cheque. I wish someone could make that make sense to me.
As a single parent, in many instances, you have to dedicate two days/lunch hours a month just to collect your money, which is typically paid retroactively. Not even covid has encouraged the court to make the process more bearable for us. The only change they saw fit to make was to have us wait outside to collect our payments. Of course we have to beg for the attention of the security guards first, before we can hand them our ID, which is then passed to the clerk handling disbursements. In this covid era, and year of 2021, why can’t the cheque simply be prepared once the monies have been paid? Would that not help to alleviate the traffic at the court?
While I do not regret my decision to take the other party to court, I can understand the hesitation by some women to have to go through that process… And still deal with attitude from workers like we put ourselves in that situation.
I hope the covid exposure was a wake-up call and they will revise the process to make it more manageable, as not everyone has the time and ability to make two trips.
Fix it, Jesus.
Good luck