I came not to send peace, but a sword… – Matthew 10:34
…and I … I have made WAR. – The True Mayhem
Yesterday, on a Friday, I drove to Tallahassee to deal with the Department of Revenue once and for all, face to face.
Once I got the address right, I headed to the location without an appointment (because they do not do appointments). I had gone through the usual revolving door of phone calls with absolutely no luck and no calls back, despite being promised a phone call as soon as there was an update on my case. Each time I called, there ended up being a different part to the story added in by whoever I was happening to speak to at that time. The last time I called, that Monday, I was able to get on the line with a supervisor. Even they seemed confused at first when they first brought up the case on their computer. The one consistent aspect of this situation is that every single time I called, the Department of Revenue phone operator always agreed that this was all done in error and that they had no right nor proper instruction from the courts to garnish my wages. This time, the supervisor told me that they would “send my case over to the local office and request the Income Withholding order be rescinded”. That local office, was of course all the way in Tallahassee.
As I drove through the maze of streets that is Tallahassee’s downtown district, I noticed all of the various state agencies buildings, and of course, law offices. The law offices all look like refurbished homes, very quaint and nice. I actually really enjoy that style of architecture found throughout the deep South, usually accompanied by tall trees with moss hanging down from the branches. When I turned onto the street with the Department of Revenue, I drove right by it. It was not what I expected at all. The location near my house, which is in Crestview, is actually not that old and at least is spacious enough to accommodate a room full of people waiting to speak to a case worker. This one in Tallahassee was shrouded in trees, had posters and flyers in varying states of peeling and cracking, and for the most part was a very unassuming building. There was nothing that told me I was in the right place except for the writing across the one door visible from the parking lot. CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT.
I walked in, several documents in hand, and went up to the counter. After giving some basic information, the clerk told me to have a seat. There was no number to take or any way to gauge where I was in line. The building had a very narrow hallway that went in both directions and lined with the booths that you would be called to sit at, and then the waiting room. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned or vacuumed in quite some time. None of this bothered me, they are merely observation. There were two other people in the room with me, a teenager whose mother was meeting with a case worker, and a large gentleman who came in right after me. Immediately, he struck up a conversation with the teen and asked him how his grades were and if he did any sports. It was a very positive conversation to overhear, this guy genuinely seemed to want to impart a life lesson and any advice he could while he was here waiting. I guess it put me at ease as well, we’re all stuck in a situation of varying similarity and the important thing at the end of the day is that the children are taken care of. After the teen left with his mother, the gentleman turned to me and said, “I’d like to make sure that any young person that I meet doesn’t have to make the same mistakes that I did, except for the ones they are meant to learn from”. As soon as he said that, my name was called.
I sat down in front of the glass window separating me from the case worker that would be talking to me today, a Mrs. Morris. I had prepared myself to recount the situation at hand in a basic and thorough way that didn’t say too much at once, so we could slowly piece together what was going on. The previous visits I had made to the Crestview office always were very awkward and even hostile at the beginning of them, as I would barely be able to hold back my frustration, while someone brand new to my situation tried to play catch up and make sense of it all. This time was very calm, very quiet, and I felt a level of patience that I have never felt before when dealing with them. I absolutely credit this to me being sober now, there is no way I would have had the ability to sit through this and stay calm before. When I was still drinking and put in encounters like these, I would describe myself as having a lit fuse sticking out of the back of my head, burning down towards an explosion.
Eventually we got caught up and on the same page, and she called her supervisor in to speak with us. They both agreed this was an egregious error, started back in 2013 when they first became involved with my child support payments. To this day, we will never know how someone was convinced to enter in my information wrong and set up an income withdrawal without me being served with a court order. The bottom line is that this was never truly rectified two years ago. The supervisor came back out five minutes later after reading through all of the notes for my case that had been taken down each time I had called. He let me read through them and that is when he dropped the bombshell on me that contradicted what I had been told EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAD CALLED PREVIOUSLY. On June 3rd, one day after I had noticed my paycheck being short started trying to fix this mess, the Department of Revenue paid my daughters mother BOTH payments that they had received from my paycheck and my bank account. A grand total of over $1,400. She never said a word. After I had made her aware of the situation and the errors the day before. Just kept the money and kept her mouth shut. Disappointing. Surprising? Hell no. So instead of a “surplus” amount of money that might go towards my July payment, my account had a balance of zero dollars.
The supervisor and case worker went over all of the options we had and decided that getting the income withholding order cancelled would be the quickest resolution, and cover me for any future grief should someone claim they weren’t paid the following month of July. I was instructed to not make a payment in July as the Clerk of Court would be alerted of the discrepancy in the amounts. They also told me they would place an “override” on my child support case, preventing any income withholding orders from being sent out in the future. This was not done two years ago and they told me that was the reason this happened again, in short. Mrs. Morris would be notifying the Clerk of Court of the error, and making sure that the order cancellation went through and sent to my company by the end of next week. Also, going against everything that has happened previously with other case workers, both her and her supervisor gave me their direct phone numbers and also promised to call me every step of the way to ensure this was handled before July and that I would know the status of the situation. I thanked Mrs. Morris multiple times and told her how much I appreciated her help and finally giving me a resolution to this very frustrating and drawn out experience. It is a helpless feeling going through something like this and having every attempt to move forward, turn into a step backwards. I am thankful that Tallahassee is a close enough drive to where I could try and handle things in person. There are 9 more years of this custody situation, and hopefully they are without incident as far as the child support goes. I accept that, it is the way things are. I do not wish to speak to any of these people ever again and do not plan on being the cause of any reason for them to interfere with my case. Leave me alone to raise my daughter in peace. I consider this the end of a chapter in my life and I am done thinking about it.
That drive up Capital Circle towards the highway with my windows down and music loud was one of the most liberating feelings of my entire life.
