Women claim tribes won’t enforce child support

Capitol Weekly (U.S.A.)
2 September 2010

Women claim tribes won’t enforce child support
By Malcolm Maclachlan

When Christina Brown got together with her soon-to-be ex-husband in the early 1990s, they were poor. But he’s a member of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians. When the tribe’s casino opened up a few years later, the checks started rolling in, around $20,000 a month. They moved out of their mobile home into a big house. Nice cars and a 34-foot Fleetwood motor home followed.

After what she described as a worsening domestic situation, she left him in 2007. Brown, who noted that she once had a drug problem, said she’s been clean for years now.

But in other ways, her present looks a lot like her past. She’s on welfare and food stamps, living with her mother in a two-bedroom house, and running four payments behind on her car.

And there’s another crucial difference: she’s responsible for the children.  She has five over all — one before her husband, three with him and one after. The three youngest live with her, including two from her husband, but she says he hasn’t paid child support in years, despite the fact that he still gets thousands of dollars a month from the tribe.

“The court ordered him to make all these payments,” Brown said. “But I couldn’t garnish them.”….

“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” Brown said. “Trust me. I would have never had kids if I knew I was going to go this way. I would have gone straight education.”….(Full Story)

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Given that being a welfare mom as a career choice did not work out well for Christina Brown,  why does she not just give custody of her children to their respective fathers?  It looks as if at least two of her children would certainly be substantially better off.

She can then still pursue a career in education.  She is still young enough for that.  People have done it when they were in their seventies.  Perhaps it will not even cost her a dime to do so if things are similar to the way they are in Canada in that respect.  Status natives in Canada can obtain university degrees for free, with the government footing the bill.  They will not be required to run up the sometimes horrendous debts in doing so that normal mortals must labour under.

Mind you, it takes work to obtain a degree, and then it takes more work to earn a living, but, if the “government” pays for the degree, why not?   It is good for the self-esteem.