ok. first post here. well here are the facts.

My son hasnt seen his "Father" 9 I suse the term loosely) in almost 5 years. He lives about 15 minutes away from us.
we are still legally married becasue i havent been able to procure funds to divorce him.
I filed for child support in september of this year. I wiated that long because he was leaving us alone, and no amount of money was worth him coming around and fighting with me and trying to warp my kids mind any more than he already had.
so now what? I have no idea how much he makes ( although his myspace says $60,000) but apparently the child support people say that he has 3 different jobs and they are waiting on paperwork back from the employers before they can calculate how much he owes and everything. apparently we wont have to go to court unless he contests it? Is this true? I just need to know what i am getting myself into and what to expect in the coming months. Oh and just so you all know, I'll be filing for divorce in January. YAY!

If his status as the father has been established then you have a right to expect child support from him. It seems as if you've been carrying the whole financial load all by yourself and he should be made to pay his share.
Child support is a matter of law that can only be "contested" if he claims not to be the father, or destitution (which doesn't seem the case). I would hope that your lawyer would have laid this out for you. But I know there are good family lawyers and others who aren't too sharp. I hope you've got a good one.

It seems like not hasseling the C/S or divorce has allowed him to just ignore the matter. Once the legal wheels are in motion he'll have to deal with it. But IMO it's better to not delay things any longer. If you expect him to cause you personal grief about this insist his lawyer deal with your lawyer about any issues. He may be given visitation rights, and you'll have to accept that as part of the deal (unless there's some danger to your child).

These things like divorce and C/S are never hassel-free. Just need to hang in there and tough it out. Good luck.

I agree with Joe. And just to add, you may wish to ask them directly about what court appearances you may need to make. Different states and sometimes even different counties handle that stuff differently.

unfortunetly, i dont have a lawyer. i cant afford one. i'm filing all paperwork myself for the divorce ( theres really nothing to spilt up.. and Theres only a few bills i'm going to ask for 1/2 for. and If I dont get it its no big deal)

The child support is going through the state system and i dont have a lawyer for that either. they sort it out and get it done for me. Where I live the divorce rate is around 75%! its old news to them!
ALso, Ive heard of a law which states that if one of the parents of thier own free will hasnt seen the child in 3 years or more, it is considered abandonment and they arent awarded any custody. or something like that. has anyone heard of that?
by the way. thank you for all the great advice so far!

I have heard of that abandonement consideration, though couldn't tell you for sure for Florida. Again something that varies by state, some as much as 7 years that I've heard.

Here in Texas I have heard it is only 6 months.

I think you may have a good case for abandonement, but you would need to research it. There are tons of on-line legal research sites for you...just google them...be specific about your state, since that's the only law which will apply.

I have this one extra piece of advice if you're acting as your own lawyer....always ask the court for greatest amount possible, since judges tend to award you something less than what you claim (judges can be an odd bunch). I don't mean fraud, but include everything, like medicines, doctor bills, diapers, babysitters, etc. Whatever total you come up with is still probably less than what your due since you can't remember every expense related to you child for the last 5 years. Good luck

I could just scream!!! so now hes evading the child support people. apparently all he has to do is say whoever doesnt live at that address and hes off. no questions asked. They siad they run his socal every 3 weeks or so to see if anything comes back but so far it hasnt come back with anything. I'm so screwed. ive got feelers out to anyone who might run into him and ive got a girl who is trying to get more info out of him..he doesnt know she knows me or anything... i even went through his myspace account and looked at all his friend lists to see if i couldnt get his friends employers to call them and see if he worked at those places but i got nothing. I'm so pissed off right now!!!! ive got nothing. i cant afford to hire a private investigator. ive got nothing! its so discouraging!

If you're doing the divorce thing yourself, just go ahead and get that done. It doesn't sound like he'll show up to contest anything, and you will get most of what u ask for, most certainly the child support. Once you have a court order filed with the C/S agency they will see to it that if he takes any sort of job they'll garnish his wages FOR THE BACK CHILD SUPPORT and whatever is currently due. Trying to sleuth around on your own seems futile at this point. So if u find him how u going to force him to pay? The only folks that do that is the C/S agency...they can put him jail if he fails to pay. He will have to go to great lengths to "show cause" why he shouldn't pay, and in the end have to pay anyhow. I know the legal process is slow and a hassle but it's your best shot right now.

i cant serve him papers if i dont know where he is

OK, I guess u r right. And if you talked to someone who knew about these things (like a process server) and offered u a solution, then u wouldn't have anything to complain about.

Do you have any sort of "Legal Aid" in your area? And as far as serving him with papers look into your local law on that. In many places if the location of the person is not known then you can post a public announcement in the newspaper and if he does not respond in a certain amount of time then he is SOL.....

Joe, I wasnt complaining. I thought that i could vent a little cause people here have been through what i am going through. I'm sorry...It wont happen again.
Mashell thanks for the advice. I am going to look into the state/county help to see what i can sort out.

"MEN ARE PIGS"???? That is a hateful, sexist comment if I ever heard one. Even your "(most are)" doesn't do anything to remove the implied hostility toward one gender. Kcmom...you should be ashamed! The only way you can feel u can get away with that is that the majority of folks reading these posts are women. But that doesn't make it right. And I would hope that some of the women here would have the same reaction I did. Saying hateful, mean-spirited things about others IS NEVER JUSTIFIED. If you think it is then you've been watching Rosie O'Donnel and the View way too much!

In reading the many posts by women on this board I have sensed an undercurrent of hositility, bordering on hatred, by some toward men. Given that many of the women who come here are single mothers in often desperate circumstances I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But at some point you're going to have to own up to YOUR responsibility for being in the position your in, and stop blaming the men in your lives for all your troubles. You chose to have sex with the men who are the fathers of your children. And, yes some are the "sexy bad boys" u describe...but YOU picked them, didn't u? I don't hear anyone saying they were forced into having a bad boy's kids. And when the relationship goes south there is fault to be found on both sides. The only INNOCENT VICTIMS are the children. Carrying around hatred toward men only hurts you spiritually and ultimately will be sensed by the children and affect them too.

My point is that you may have just reasons to complain about the immature and intolerable actions of the other half of your relationship, and that's alright. But you can never grow as a person if you continue to think someone else is totally responsible for where u r in life.

Note to Korbinsmom: My intention wasn't to chastize you for ranting and complaining, but to try and get you to look at positive ways to address your problem. I suppose ranting can have some theraputic effect..and that's not a bad thing. But I would hope u might see that myself and others are trying to help you solve your specific problem....and to not lose hope. I didn't want u to get bogged down in a sense of hopelessness, since your specific problem can be resolved. I didn't intend to make u feel bad, OK?

Just thought I'd post a little something here. One of the things that I've really liked about this site since the day I joined here was that men and women could come here and learn from one another. I can't tell you how many times I've read posts that stated that due to the opposite gender input on this site that members have been given hope that even after bad relationships and otherwise tarnished views about the opposite sex, that there really is some good people out there, where some had otherwise given up hope and had pretty much only negative general opinions about the opposite sex.
We come here as single parents, be it mother or father, and find support from other single parents and very often are also rewarded with new insight towards problems we might be facing because we are able to hear opinions from both men and women.
Just the nature of the forum, single parents....not single mothers or single fathers, to me means that often we are going to hear something negative towards our gender as a result of what members have been through in previous relationships or are going through currently, whether that's a man venting or a woman venting. In the end I think it has always turned out well with just a little open mindedness from both sides of the fence, basically we realize that there really are no "sides" We are (man or woman) still facing many of the same exact issues whether that's the other parent in our life isn't being involved in the child's life, isn't supporting them financially or emotionally, is still causing us greif on a regular basis for whatever reason, or so many of the other stuff we deal with as evidenced throughout the forum. We are all in a similar boat here, though we might be floating along on a different body of water. We're just trying to give our children the best life we can regardless of the circumstances we have to work with or problems that we have to work around.