Author: Super User

Los Angeles, CA–“I’m gonna find me a reckless woman / razor blades and dice in her eyes / Just a touch of sadness in her fingers / thunder and lightening in her thighs”–from “Silver Stallion,” by The Highwaymen

I was something of a fan of the former country music super group The Highwaymen (Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson), but I had to laugh when I heard the lyrics above recently. It sounds great Waylon, but usually about five years later guys who do hook up with a woman like you describe are filling out my Family Law Help Form. It’s not worth it.

The video of “Silver Stallion” can be seen here or below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVZpWy5qaOs&feature=related]

Welshpool, England–Mom leaves the country for six weeks, leaving her 14-year-old daughter to fend for herself rather than allow her to be cared for by her ex-husband. When confronted with this she “apportioned blame for the situation on everybody else apart from herself.” And check out her excuse for leaving the girl with only £100. Anybody want to bet she retains custody of the girl? The story is below–thanks to Malcolm, a reader, for sending it. Girl ‘home alone for six weeks’ BBC NEWS, 1/18/08 A woman abandoned her 14-year-old daughter for six weeks with just £100 and a fridge full of food while she traveled abroad, a court has heard.
The woman, who cannot be identified, was visiting her boyfriend in 2007. She told Welshpool magistrates she had arranged for a neighbour and her ex-husband to look after her daughter. The woman denies wilfully causing her daughter to be neglected and abandoned. The case was adjourned until 8 February. The court heard the woman had stocked her fridge and freezer with pizza, oven chips and microwave meals before she went abroad between April and June. Of her £100 allowance, £60 was spent almost immediately on school dinners for the period her mother was away. She spent most of the remaining £40 on clothes and CDs, magistrates were told. Social services were alerted to the girl’s situation after only two days and arranged for her father, also the woman’s ex-husband, to look after her for the remainder of her mother’s holiday. He said he was unaware his daughter had been left home alone.

Murfreesboro, TN–Background: When discussing child support enforcement, I often refer to them as “The IRS on steroids.” Child support enforcement agencies are notorious for their bureaucratic bungling and incessant computer errors, and there is practically no idiocy which they don’t and won’t commit.

For some examples, see my coverage of the outrageous Herbert L. Chalmers case, as well as Child Support Enforcement Accuses Teenage Boy of Fathering Child When He Was Three from Australia, and some of the cases I document in my co-authored column Memphis Commercial Appeal, Chest-Thumping Sheriff Humiliate Hard Luck Noncustodial Parents (Tennessee Tribune, 4/27/06).

Knock me over with a feather–here’s another abusive Tennessee child support screw-up. The Tennessee Department of Human Services tries to shake down an innocent father for $50,000 for some other guy’s kids, and even years later the problem has not been straightened out.

DHS’s defense? “The children’s welfare is the No. 1 concern.” Of course.

Man Involved In ID Mix-Up Over Child Support
1/15/08
NewsChannel5.com, Nashville, TN

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – Imagine being told you owe $50,000 in child support for children that aren’t yours.

That’s what’s happening to a Murfreesboro man.

The Tennessee Department of Human Services has thousands of names of parents that owe child support. One of those names is Dennis Joe Brannon.

No one knows where he lives, but the state does know where Dennis K. Brannon lives.

They apparently want him pay for the other guy’s children.

“I’ve been married happily over 21 years and it’s just not possible that I’ve got kids in another county,” said Dennis K. Brannon of Murfreesboro.

Brannon has letters from the state demanding he pay child support.

“It’s in the sum of $50,000,” he said as he looked at the latest letter.

The letter came from the Attorney General’s office in Huntsville, Tenn., which is northeast of Knoxville.

The state is looking for Dennis Joe Brannon, but Dennis K. Brannon is receiving the threatening letters.

Initially, Brannon and his wife thought the mix-up was funny.

“We kind of made a running joke about this, but then it gets aggravating after awhile,” he said. “After two or three years, it’s time to get it straightened out.”

He claims he’s called several times.

“Well I’m sure if he’s been in contact with our office, we would do whatever we needed to do to rectify the situation and make sure we have the right person,” said Lori Jones, Assistant District Attorney of Child Support Division.

That isn’t the case, Brannon said.

“They told me I’d have to come up there and do a DNA test and prove I’m not the father of these children,” he said…

Read the full article here.

San Francisco, CA–“The capacity to love is a vital, rich and all-consuming function…you can find nobility and sacrifice and love wherever you may seek it out…”–Rod Serling

Most fathers would do anything to protect their daughters, and here’s another example. Like hero father James Kim, Albert Collins gave his life to save his family. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Collins’ last act was to throw his body over the top of his daughter to shield her from the barrage that would leave him dead, his daughter with a graze wound and two brothers injured…

“A cousin held Collins’ head. Nash said she watched helplessly, as her son made what would be his final requests. ‘He told his sister to look out for his son and his daughter.'”

The story is below–thanks to Brad Smith, a reader, for sending it to me.

A father gets gunned down saving his daughter
Jaxon Van Derbeken
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 6, 2008

On New Year’s Eve morning, Albert Collins took his 9-year-old daughter, Mariah, to pick out a treat at a candy house in the Sunnydale public housing project.
It was a fatal errand.

For years, candy houses have been makeshift havens in crime-plagued neighborhoods where residents sell and buy candy and other items in safety – rather than venture to liquor-dealing corner stores that are often magnets for trouble.

Collins, 30, had recently gotten a job through Goodwill Industries and was staying with his mother at the Sunnydale public housing project in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley. By all accounts, he was trying to make a better life for himself, his daughter and his 13-year-old son, Albert Jr., whom he took custody of after the boy’s mother had recently been jailed in Oakland.

But he didn’t get the chance.

As Collins stopped on the way to the candy house to talk to friends – two brothers who lived in the neighborhood – they were hit with gunfire at 11:40 a.m.
Collins’ last act was to throw his body over the top of his daughter to shield her from the barrage that would leave him dead, his daughter with a graze wound and two brothers injured.

“He turned and sensed something was happening and grabbed her,” said Inspector Michael Gaynor of the San Francisco police homicide detail. “At some point, he saw the guy with the gun – that was when he grabbed her.”

With that, Collins became the last of the city’s 98 homicides in 2007, the highest yearly death toll in more than a decade. According to police, he may have been an innocent victim in a gang-related shooting, by gang members firing at rivals nearby.

Read the full article here.

London, England–“[Poor men are] condemned to perpetual celibacy. For of course it goes without saying that if a tramp finds no women at his own level, those above–even a very little above–are as far out of his reach as the moon…there is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend to men who are much poorer than themselves.”–George Orwell

George Orwell is one of my favorite authors, particularly his writings about the Spanish Civil War and the politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. His 1933 book Down and Out in Paris and London is his semi-autobiographical account of living in poverty in both cities.

Orwell’s observations on the issue of gender and homelessness and of the enforced celibacy of poverty-stricken men are interesting. Orwell wrote:

“[Beyond hunger] The second great evil of a tramp’s life–it seems much smaller at first sight, but it is a good second–is that he is entirely cut off from contact with women. This point needs elaborating.

“Tramps are cut off from women, in the first place, because there are very few women at their level of society. One might imagine that among destitute people the sexes would be as equally balanced as elsewhere. But it is not so; in fact, one can almost say that below a certain level society is entirely male… at the [poverty] level men outnumber women by something like ten to one.

“The cause is presumably that unemployment affects women less than men; also that any presentable woman can, in the last resort, attach herself to some man. The result, for a tramp, is that he is condemned to perpetual celibacy. For of course it goes without saying that if a tramp finds no women at his own level, those above–even a very little above–are as far out of his reach as the moon…but there is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend to men who are much poorer than themselves.

“A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except–very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings–a prostitute…

“There is degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man’s self-respect.”

Thanks to Callum, a reader, for bringing this to my attention.

London, England–The woman describes her late husband as being a “fantastic father,” and he was also an attorney, but somehow he didn’t contribute enough to the family to meet her needs. Now that he’s dead and she has his life insurance money, she says she’s happier without him. What a sweetheart.

The story is below–thanks to Patrick, a reader, for sending it.

I”m happier since he died
The sudden death of her carefree husband left a reader in shock. Then she found that, financially and emotionally, life was easier
The Times (UK)
1/16/08

When Stephen died it was the speed of it all that stunned me at first. He”d been feeling tired and generally under the weather and I”d told him to see the GP, convinced that he had diplomatic flu (he was fed up at work). He was referred for further investigation immediately, which should have made us suspicious, but it took talk of an operation to make us realise that this was serious.

In the three weeks from his first visit to the doctor until the night he died, we didn”t face the possibility of his cancer being terminal, reassuring each other that something could be done. We were scared, but more of the treatment that lay ahead and how it would disrupt our lives before everything got back on track than fear that he would die.

Our families and several friends were in the house that night, as they had been regularly once we told them that Stephen was ill. His brother was helping him upstairs for a lie-down when Stephen called to me so urgently and desperately that I dropped the baby in my mum”s lap and ran to him. He just died there, at the bottom of the stairs, with his brother and me holding him.

You don”t expect someone to die at 30; it seemed totally unreal, telling our three-year-old daughter that Daddy had gone to heaven. Our son was still a baby and our family and friends, who were equally shocked, looked after everything for me to begin with. My grief was genuine, as was the shock. But the greatest shock of all soon followed, so shocking that I find it hard to write: I now prefer life without him.

Stephen and I met at university. Despite being totally different, we were inseparable instantly. I adored his relaxed attitude to life (I”ve always been a bit of a control freak). We worked well together, me getting him to his lectures, him persuading me that student life involved more than just studying. He proposed the day we graduated and we decided to get married the next summer, which meant a lot of organising. Suddenly we were doing very grown-up things. Or rather, I was, and Stephen was hovering in the background.

I had assumed that Stephen would become much more focused once we began working. I was doing my doctorate as well as working, but Stephen, a lawyer, never felt that he should help out more or focus on his career. His sick record (usually because of hangovers) was dreadful. He got annoyed when the first firm he worked in didn”t offer him a partnership. He moved to another one; two years later the same thing happened. He couldn”t grasp the connection between still living like a student and not being taken seriously. Perhaps I colluded in this, as it was easier for me to manage the finances and organise things. We were delighted when I became pregnant. He was a fantastic father to our children and still irresistible to me most of the time, except when I was too tired to appreciate a spontaneous bottle of champagne. When he died I thought it was the end of the world.

Then the second shock came: I realised how comfortable we now were financially. The mortgage was paid off instantly and Stephen”s pension kicked in. I”d had both of us insured to the hilt, and we now had a lot of money in the bank…

Read the full story here.

New York, New York–“We’re middle-class people with middle-class values. We came to Palm Beach for what was supposed to be the best day in the lives of two human beings, and ended up with two full days of crass negotiations for a prenuptial agreement.

“It was like a business transaction. That attitude is foreign to us. There was such urgency on Fisher’s part, it bordered on desperation.”–Joe Bailer, the groom’s father

A man refused to go through with the wedding to his lawyer bride after the woman’s billionaire father “demanded he sign a last-minute amendment agreeing to pay the woman alimony, no matter how much she inherits from her dad.” Story below.

Billionaire’s daughter’s wedding called off at last minute as father objects to pre-nup
Daily Mail (UK)
January 15, 2008

The wedding of a billionaire’s daughter was called off at the last minute because of a change to the prenuptial agreement.

The bride and groom along with 300 guests were left in limbo as the society wedding of the season ground to a halt.

Three ballrooms had been reserved for the million-dollar celebrations at the exclusive Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

In the end, the two families ended up having separate parties in adjoining hotels to ‘celebrate’ the wedding that never happened.

Late in the evening, the bride, Alexandra Fisher, put in a brief, tearful appearance among her family, dressed in black.

Meanwhile, the groom, Josh Bailer, glumly nursed a drink with his best man and his 80 guests.

They had been dating for three years and engaged for 18 months.

Miss Fisher, 28, is the lawyer-daughter of American hotel tycoon Jeff Fisher.

Mr Bailer, 33, is a Wall Street trader, wealthy in his own right, but not in the same league as Mr Fisher who last year sold his Innkeepers hotel chain for nearly £1 billion.

Three days before the wedding, the couple happily signed a prenuptial contract in which it was agreed that if the marriage failed, both sides would walk away with no alimony payments.

But on the wedding day, Mr Bailer’s father, Joe, said Mr Fisher demanded that Josh sign a last-minute amendment agreeing to pay Alexandra alimony, no matter how much she inherits from her dad.

Read the full story here.

Los Angeles, CA–Fred, a reader, recently wrote me with an interesting piece of information on how the IRS treats alimony and legal fees. Fred writes:

“IRS Publication 504 (Taxes for Divorced Individuals) states on page 20:

“‘FEES FOR GETTING ALIMONY…Because you must include alimony you receive in your gross income, you can deduct fees you pay to get or collect alimony.’

“This means that all legal fees the ex-wife pays in association with her receiving alimony are deductible as a Miscellaneous Deduction on Form 1040, Schedule-A. It doesn’t matter whether she is trying to retain the alimony she is now getting or if she initiates the proceedings to obtain more alimony. The legal fees are deductible to her, but your legal fees are not deductible to you. Even if the legal fees were just to defend yourself from having to pay more alimony.”

This seems rather unfair–any accountants out there know more about it?