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Date published: 9/10/2006
BETHESDA, Md.--John Mur- From the state's perspective, However, the initial support level was not based on his income, but the $70,000 he once earned as a software engineer for a defense firm. When the company filed false reports, he says he blew the whistle and was fired the next day. Though president of his own software firm, his earnings are half of what he used to make. The first injustice is that his child support level was set far too high. Second, the court allowed his wife to move to Colorado, in spite of his protest. She's studying for a third college degree, which she could have pursued in New York state. Why should any court allow a divorced parent to move so far away that child visitation by the parent left behind is almost impossible? If Domenic visited him, John had to fly to Colorado, pick him up, bring him back, and then return with him to Colorado. Three round trip tickets cost $1,000 per visit. But the court would not allow him to deduct that from his child support payments. That's a third injustice. Fourth, he repeatedly filed for modifications of his child support level, and was denied. He was assigned a public defender who told him, "John, just pay the money. You'll see your son when he is 18." John has been paying $50 a month, which is skimpy. However, he estimates he has spent $60,000 in support of his son, but none of it counts in the court's eyes. In the last seven years, he flew out four times a year for visits, and picked him up for vacations in New York twice a year. "How many of those could I have traded away--and not lost our relationship?" he asks.
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