‘Lap dances’: Horror for woman making $1k a day as dad’s secret life exposed
There’s a myth that Aussies earning six figures are wealthy but people are exposing the devastating impact of a system in crisis.
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When Queensland woman Caitlyn* saw her salary soar to $1000 a day, she thought she had finally made it - but she couldn’t imagine the devastation that lay ahead.
Caitlyn met her ex-husband as a single mum and said she essentially became a “slave” to his financial demands.
A pattern emerged where he worked very little and could never hold down a job, while she was employed the whole time.
“I got a degree and was doing really well and he just would never look after the children and I would have to have the kids in childcare, even when he wasn’t working,” she told news.com.au
Exhausted from doing everything for the children on top of working full time, she demanded a break from her job but was told by her ex-husband it wouldn’t happen as they would lose the house.
Caitlyn said she was even forced to borrow money from her parents, despite the couple sharing a joint back account.
“There were times I would look at the bank account and see weird things,” she revealed.
“He would disappear for a night and spend $1000. I suspect it was $70 a go having lap dances, but the bank won’t tell you what he had spent the money on as you aren’t the primary cardholder.”
‘My Frankenstein monster’
The Queensland woman didn’t only experience economic abuse in the relationship, it was much worse.
“There was violence and coercion in the marriage. I didn’t realise it was that. I thought domestic violence was getting strangled and punched in the face, not getting shoved and pinched and generally yelled at,” she added.
Eventually, she left the marriage but she was shocked at how the child support system enabled the economic abuse to continue.
“I was supporting three households at one point – my own, his and my elderly parents. Every time I got a payrise he would know how much I earned and would take that and use that against me,” she said.
“It was disheartening. It interfered with so many aspects of my life and you work really hard and really long hours to benefit someone who doesn’t want the best for you or your kids.”
Things took a devastating turn when one of the children decided to live with her full time.
“At that point he screamed at [our daughter] that she had made his life untenable by leaving the house as he would no longer get child support – that’s what he screamed at a 14-year-old,” she explained.
“His whole life had been around using that child support system for 10 years. I used to call him my Frankenstein monster as he was always there – able to poke and prod. It’s been devastating to my mental health as I couldn’t get away from him.”
‘I will always earn more than him’
Piper* is another high earner, who is bringing in $134,000 a year after tax, who experienced emotional and physical abuse during her relationship.
“Towards the end it got really bad. I felt like I was always defending my kids and it ended up with him breaking my finger and putting me in hospital and I needed surgery for that,” she told news.com.au.
“The relationship went on for just under another a year and it was awful and everything got worse. In the end, I had to go see a lawyer and go to the police basically to get him out of the house.”
But she revealed that’s exactly when the economic abuse began.
“I have majority care of my children and pay child support. I will always earn more than him. My ex-partner does not contribute to school costs, medical, dental bills or for other activities for my children,” she said.
“Prior to my most recent IVO on my ex-partner, I was constantly verbally abused about how I make more money than him and can afford it. He constantly approves school activities for payment and doesn’t pay – telling the children he has approved it and then leaving it to myself to pay.
“I still bear the brunt of it and he gloats about it.
“Everyone seems to think if you earn over six figures that you are wealthy – when you are still paying everything.”
Invasion of privacy
Caitlyn is highly critical of key aspects of the child support system.
“Every tax time he got to see exactly what I was earning and it was such an invasion of privacy,” she said.
Piper is also furious about the system’s invasive nature and said the level of financial detail required on child support forms is “ridiculous” and unnecessary.
“It asks for absolutely everything that you have got financially and any mortgages or personal loans and that information you are expected to fill out every time,” she said.
She wants to see the child support formulas reassessed and the level of detail supplied changed.
“To put all those details on those child support forms – there is no reason to know it,” she said.
“They don’t need to know that you have $2500 in your savings account or your mortgage is whatever value, they don’t base it on that. They just base it on the salary from the ATO at tax time.
“They don’t take into account all those other financial pieces that they are asking you for.
“I think the government has put it all in the too hard basket and I don’t see it getting better before my kids turn 18 as the government processes are so slow.”
‘Angry and angsty’
The battle to prove a ex-partner is making money has also been a widespread criticism of the system, including for Caitlyn.
“It just causes them to be angry and angsty at the kids,” she noted.
Piper said she is sure her ex-partner is fiddling with his tax return to decrease his salary as much as possible, claiming he makes less than $20,000 a year.
She also wants to see changes made when she claims other parents are exploiting child support money.
“I know they try to make the kids have the same lifestyle between the same houses and that’s generally benefited people, who have been primary caregivers and haven’t been able to work,” she said.
“I respect that but I think there needs to be another category for people who are entirely capable of working and a test that this person is more than capable of working and deliberately not earning an income.”
A system used to further control
Caitlyn added there is also no way of testing how the child support money is used and in her case it meant the kids “missing out” when they were with their father as he used it to fund his lifestyle.
Instead, she was forced to cough up for anything extra curricular or even a new pair of footy boots.
“Once he stopped getting any child support for the kids at all, he completely cut them off,” she revealed.
Piper agrees that the child support system makes an assumption when calculating payments that both parents are providing for the children’s educational, medical and dental costs when the kids are in their care.
“However in reality this does not always occur and the current child support assessment system does not allow for that assumption to be challenged to ensure that the other parent does contribute fairly. Abusers know this and use it to control their ex-partner. This needs to be addressed,” she said.
Now in her 50s, Caitlyn said she wanted to bust the myth that it was only men paying child support.
“Most people have this idea that women sit at home. There is nothing about women paying child support, it’s always about these poor blokes and he has to cough up child support,” she noted.
“There’s never anything about what happens to women who leave a violent relationship.”
Caitlyn has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from the domestic violence she experienced.
“It’s curtailed what I can earn as its gotten on top of me,” she said. “It’s hard to explain what it’s like. The kids grew up and suddenly I didn’t have to earn all this money to support them and I have fallen in a heap.
“We are not all high flying with great mental health. Some of us are just ordinary people who have tried really hard and been screwed over.”
Count down until children reach 18
While Caitlyn is now free of the child support system, Piper dreads still having to deal with it for years to come and being “harassed”.
“You don’t want to wish your child’s lives away,” she noted sadly.
Every time the care arrangements change she said it takes a minimum of four months for the child support agency to assess how much should be paid.
She said even when her son decided he no longer wanted to live with his dad, an interim period to assess the situation still meant she was out of pocket by $1000 despite her child being in her care full time.
“I was completely stressed by the system,” she added. “The process is way too long and very inflexible.”
‘Ultimate injustice’
Professor Kay Cook, Swinburne University of Technology associate dean of research in social sciences, said often women’s incomes come under a much higher level of scrutiny, particularly as many rely on the benefits system.
“Men have their own business and it’s a primary vehicle where taxable incomes are reduced to almost nothing and they are then entitled to a share of the other person’s income,” she noted.
She said men are weaponising the child support system to continue economic abuse.
“The entire system has been able to be gained to have the victim-survivor paying them as the ultimate injustice,” she said.
Professor Cook agreed the ability to challenge child support assessments was extremely difficult.
“If the person who feels like they have been treated unjustly is the victim-survivor, it’s an enormous process. It’s an administrative burden and cost to generate all the data and supply all the information and to try and make the case that the other parent has higher means than they reporting,” she explained.
“The other party has no obligation to engage with the process but they receive all the information the complainant submits and it’s passed through to other party in the name of fairness and transparency. It benefits the respondent as not providing information makes it harder to make a decision and then a decision is more likely to go in their favour.”
‘Burn’ the system down
Professor Cook believes the only solution is “burn” the entire child support system down in its current form as its created a “battleground” for “administrate warfare” with an ex-partner.
“It’s in a black hole. It’s family law, it’s financial counselling, financial justice, it’s with the tax and benefits system – it has intersections with all these systems – and no one owns it and no one really knows what to do it,” she said.
“There is no where to get help. You can’t go into the Centrelink office and get help, its only a phone line and it’s hours long wait times or incomprehensible info on a website or a massive form – it’s not working.”
She suggests rather than an individualised system, it should be non resident parents paying higher tax to the government, which is then distributed.
A spokesperson for Department of Social Services said recommendations have been made by the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System into the Child Support Scheme.
They are being examined by the Department of Social Services, Services Australia, the Australian Taxation Office and the Treasury, with a particular focus on improved collection and enforcement.
“This work will inform future arrangements, including to continue efforts to ensure the Child Support Scheme is not able to be used to continue financial control and abuse after separation,” they said.
*Names have been changed
sarah.sharples@news.com.au
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