A man recently took to Reddit to ask AITA (Am I the A*****e?) for “relentlessly” going after child support from an ex even though he admits it’s not about the money at all. The title of the post is “AITA for ‘relentlessly’ going after child support from the mother of my child even though she never wanted anything to do with him and I don’t ‘need’ it.” As you might imagine, people on Reddit were none too pleased by the submission.
Despite nearly 2,000 comments on the post, the majority of which were negative, the man still felt he had been wronged. He wrote, “She never wanted anything to do with [my son].” Woo. Deep breaths.
According to the post, it all started with a college fling.
The post starts off explaining what predicated his situation. “So I had a fling with an art student around the time I graduated college. She fell pregnant. She was going to get an abortion but her mother said she’d cut her off if she did that,” he wrote.
He notes, that he didn’t believe the woman he had a “fling” with after she confided that her mother would “cut her off.”
“I personally have a hard time believing that because her mom and family are the most kindest people I’ve met.”
He wrote, “fell pregnant.” Can you already feel that this is going to be a winner?
He says his ex even considered putting the child up for adoption.
He goes on to detail the days after his ex gave birth and the options she weighed for herself. “Anyways she was going to give my son up for adoption but her living saint of a mother contacted me and I got full custody of my son and she only pays child support.”
It seems like his ex’s “living saint of a mother” got too involved in his ex’s personal life and complicated the whole situation more than she helped.
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According to the post, the man says his ex got a job in New York City when his son was 3-years-old.
“Around the time my son was three she got a job as an art curator in nyc and she moves halfway across the country I was like whatever as long as she still pays child support,” he wrote.
The dad didn’t care about his ex as long as she continued to pay him child support. She moved across the country, started a new job, and still managed to make the payments to him.
Thought: Shouldn’t her mother, who insisted on her having the child make these payments?
The dad explained that he was doing well financially and making ‘twice as much’ as his child’s mother.
According to this man, it’s been 5 years since his ex moved to New York City. He admits in the post that he was thriving financially “And I make roughly twice as much as my son’s birth giver.”
If the words “birth giver” and this information didn’t make you scratch your chin, check out what else he divulged: “Periodically, I either hire an investigator or her mom just tells me she got a raise and I go to court to adjust the child support accordingly. The last time I did this, she didn’t show up for court, and I apparently overestimated how much her raise was, and I got a default judgment.”
He, a well off man by his own accounting, hired private investigators to tell him whenever his ex got a raise so that he could get even more child support money from her. If the PI’s fell through, he could always depend on his ex’s mom to let him know this information. This mom seems like a gem.
After receiving the default judgment, his ex apparently called to request a lower payment.
“She called me up and practically pleaded with me to lower her payments after I said no she insulted me and my son,” he continued. “So I just gave her my favorite Good Fellas quote and hung up. AITA?”
“I feel like I’m looking out for my son. If he doesn’t have a mother, the least I can do is make sure he has the best life possible.”
He then turned to the Reddit community for them to weigh in on the situation.
People had some very strong opinions on either side. Most sided with his ex and could not believe his audacity.
“You make twice what she does,” one Redditor wrote. “You spend money hiring private investigators, so you can keep taking her to court and get more money out of her. Are you unable to care for your son? On top of this, you know that because of you she is being asked to pay more than she should. You could easily ask her to pay less. And you don’t. Yeah, you are the a**hole.”
“You and her mother forced her to give you the child and now you’re taking her for child support. Dude, you’re an a**hole, and so is her mother. What a spiteful human being you are,” another wrote.
Another commented, “As someone with experience being the child of divorced parents, move on bro. Relationships aren’t always fair, and it seems like you’re just doing it out of spite. If you’re financially stable there is no reason to be doing this.”
Although they were in the minority, some people agreed with the poster.
“A judge makes the final decision, not you,” one commenter wrote. “You’re simply giving your child every possible advantage that you can in life. If genders were reversed, the opinions here would be very different. Proud of you for standing up for your child in the place of an absent parent.”
“He’s your son, you have the right to raise him, and non-custodial parents should be paying child support,” another agreed.
“Switch the genders, would we even be asking this question?” another added.
Co-parenting a child isn’t the easiest thing in the world. However, being a good person is universal. If your child is well-cared for and money is not an issue, it’s not okay to make the other parent suffer financially. Considering that women earn 80.6 cents for every dollar a man makes, it might be on the poster to relieve some of the burden considering he makes “twice as much” as his ex. Further, this child was had against the mother’s wishes. She preferred to terminate the pregnancy or give the child up for adoption. The arrangement had very little to do with her own best interests.
Instead, she carried a baby to term for months and she gave birth to the child. Let’s agree that there is no black or white, right or wrong here. There are faults on both sides. However, we can also agree that anyone that gives their favorite “Good Fellas quote” to end a conversation is indeed the second “A” in AITA.
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