May 2021 archive

I shouldn’t have had to fight like this, but…

Enforcement on Bub’s child support case should be, and stay, ceased.

I shouldn’t have had to fight state agencies on this on this like I did, but that was what it came down to. I wound up having to divulge things that I hadn’t really talked about until that point, especially recently… but they were necessary to paint the picture of why enforcement of his child support order would not be safe for either one of us. I wound up having to contact my state’s low-income legal aid service, letting them know what was going on, although I may not need their services if the good cause waiver for his child support case was and stays approved. I’ll be sure to let them know how things are going, or have gone, at the point of our next contact. And having sent an e-mail to one of my state’s HHSC’s internal e-mail accounts also helped expedite matters, but I think I’ve already mentioned beginning to correspond with HHSC’s family violence program specialist. At that point, and at this point, I wasn’t willing to put up with the refusal of a good cause waiver when one had been on his case since 2014, and I didn’t want to have to relive certain… traumatic events that had occurred, even though I wound up having to do exactly that to have new good cause forms filled out (twice for Bub! because the first one that the domestic violence specialist submitted to HHSC was denied, even though approval of those are supposed to be at the discretion of the domestic violence specialist, not HHSC themselves). At the end of the day, I did what I had to do to protect my child.

I did what I had to do to protect myself as well, because I do not need any further interactions with members of my children’s paternal families, and lack of enforcement on their child support orders minimizes this risk.

Back and forth. Back and forth we go.

Someone tells me that the good cause claim for Bub is approved.

Hours later, someone tells me that it’s not because it is primarily against his paternal grandmother.

I left a message with the domestic violence specialist that I’ve been speaking with about submitting another good cause claim implicating Bub’s father, seeing as how he intentionally brought his parents onto my property in late 2010 knowing that they would get violent. This was something that he knew would happen, and he intentionally did it. I don’t want Bub’s father to be blameless in this situation. There is also other information that I hope to supply to the domestic violence specialist about my relationship with Bub’s father that I haven’t spoken about to anyone, because it took me years to realize that it had happened in our relationship. It was something that I didn’t want to think about because I was so focused on raising Bub and Monster, and Bub’s father hadn’t seen him since he was an infant, so it got pushed to the back of my mind where it stayed until it began to become relevant. It’s something that I will mention to the domestic violence specialist if asked about it, if it becomes relevant, which it may. But I’m sick of this back and forth madness.

I hate having been put in the position to protect my children from their other parents, even though it is absolutely necessary in both cases and it is something that I will never hesitate to do. I absolutely hate it.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet, so…

I still have a Staph infection on my leg. But should anyone be surprised?

It’s begun to heal a bit, and it has gotten smaller, but it is still definitely there. There is still pain to be had with dressing changes. I was given a prescription for codeine to take to manage it, and it has taken the edge off of the pain when I change dressings or when I bathe. It doesn’t take away all of the pain, but it does help!

However, we are now on three months of this thing, and that in itself has gotten annoying.

Taking pictures is a hobby of mine, especially when I’m taking pictures of my children.

Were we finally getting somewhere with this?

The good cause waiver for Monster’s case was approved, but… not for Bub’s case. Both of them have had good cause waivers exempting them from child support enforcement so that we can safely access benefits from 2014 all the way to now when this, for lack of a better way to put it, “suddenly” became an issue. Absolutely nothing has changed as far as the safety risks go. I have continued to be in contact with multiple people working for the child support office and HHSC, and I have broadened my horizons to include contact being made with Lone Star Legal Aid as well. Strange how mentioning that to HHSC and the local child support office suddenly got a “policy review” scheduled for my son’s case… when they knew that I had sought out legal advice and, quite possibly, any legal help that they can provide me. This could very well end in one branch of the state taking another one to court for refusing to honor the good cause waiver that the local domestic violence shelter, as per their paperwork, approved for my son’s case. It’s actually supposed to be up to the domestic violence specialist whether or not a good cause waiver gets approved, not HHSC. And as it was, I wasn’t supposed to have to renew the kids’ good cause waivers to start. They are one and done.

I anticipate that the low-income legal aid service that this state offers may be more useful than any of my prior contacts have, even though the woman that did the intake for my request was baffled that the abusive party in Bub’s case is his paternal grandmother and that there had been a waiver on his case that was allowed to stay there without a problem until now. That last bit might be what gets his case some attention.

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