I posted this on another forum, but most of the people I've encountered over there are very bitter and judgemental - especially when it comes to women and child support. I wanted to post here because I've gotten lots of positive responses and I wanted to hear some heartfelt answers, not just judgement based on bitterness.

Ok, when my ex and I were married he worked for a major phone company as an installer/tech making really good money. When I was 8 months preg with our second child, he threw it all away for something stupid - he got caught with po*rn on his work computer. He was fired and denied unemployment over his stupid decision, and we lost EVERYTHING, including our health insurance right before I had to give birth on welfare medical coverage.

We've been separated for 3 yrs now, and I have finally been able to afford to file the divorce papers pro se. In this time period, he's purposefully stayed employed at temp jobs or jobs that paid barely over min wage when he's perfectly capable of doing better(with military training and the union job history), but he blames me for draining him because DHS required me to file for child support when I got medical coverage and daycare help for my children so I could go to work when we split. He's been evicted twice from apartments now because he has a live-in gf (they've already got a 2 yr old child together now too, and she's got a kid from a previous marriage) and she doesn't work, so he thinks his job is to support her and their kid and not our children who were here before she came along.

Ok my question: I'm fighting for the court to order child support based on what he was making when we were still together. I believe our children deserve it, and after tossing it all away out of his own stupidity (I have proof with letters from the unemployment office where his claim was denied and the reasons for it) I believe he should be required to pay it.

He was fired over the same **** again the week before I filed. I didn't know this until after I called to tell him I'd filed, but it proves that he's not going to change his behavior pattern.

His gf has her friends going to my personal blog and writing emails to me telling me I'm nothing but a gold digger and out to ruin his life. That's not my intention. I just want my children to have what I believe they deserve, and he has an obligation to provide.

What do you think?

I think that your children deserve child support.....end of story. Don't worry about what her friends say, what are they to you anyway?

OH you are NOT a gold digger, not one bit. He is intentionally underemploying himself...and that doesn't look good.

The main thing I don't understand about her calling me that is the fact that he had NOTHING when I met him. We were both broke college students, and he didn't even have a car- he dated me FOR my car!! He then went into the army and got kicked out because he couldn't do anything right - not even keep up with his personal hygeine!! (Ew, I know.)

When he got fired from the original job when we were still together, he admitted he'd accepted a cd of po-rn from a CUSTOMER when he'd installed a DSL line for the guy. How you get on the subject of adult material with a CUSTOMER when you're supposed to be installing their communications lines I will never know, but apparently he got friendly enough for the guy to burn him a cd while he was there.

He put it in his work laptop and then left it there. The next day he had to be home with me because I was put on bedrest while pregnant with our daughter. His female boss was going to upload some new software onto his computer and found the cd there. Needless to say, he was toast. Then.... I went through our home computer and found TONS OF IT.

Now, I have no problem with the stuff if you need it. Less work for me, ya know? But when it causes you to lose your job, your home, everything you have, and to have to move in with your wife's 87 yr old great-grandmother 2 weeks after your wife gives birth, that should make you want to clean up your act, right?

No. I was working from home as a legal assistant/database manager for an attorney. I had to have our computer to do my job. He crashed it downloading more po-rn. I had a friend help me build a new computer. I left him and my new computer at my grandmother's for the weekend while I came up to the city to look for a new apt. In 2 days he downloaded so much po-rn he crashed my new computer- I couldn't even load Windows in SAFE MODE!! That was the final straw. He wasn't going to change. I found my own apt, that I could afford on my salary alone, and I told him to go back to his mom's. I couldn't take that, and I had to do what was right for my children if he wouldn't.

But I'm now the "demon ex soul-sucking b*tch" because I expect him to support our kids. It just ticks me off to no end.