After my first child support collection book was published in 1998 (1-800-Deadbeat: How to Collect Your Child Support) I began to receive calls from parents who wanted some professional help collecting their arrears. Either they had read the book and were ready to take the bulls by the horns but needed some direction or had already begun to use the information in the book and were applying it but needed a little help along the way.

The very first child support consulting client that I took on was a very attractive woman with a young daughter. Her looks were striking and she was smart. She seemed like a typical Mom in a typical situation. She was raising her daughter alone and was struggling because she was not receiving her child support. The financial instability forced her and her daughter into the welfare system and she had lost everything that she had. A friend had taken them in temporarily so that they would not be homeless. Everything seemed to be very typical of a young Mom trying to make it on her own. Everything except that the Mom was an escort when she became pregnant and her ‘John’ was a famous and rich sports figure.

‘Mitra’ (not her real name) and ‘John’ (not his real name) entered into an agreement that he would make a one-time lump sum payment to her of $500,000 for care and support of the child, with the understanding that it would be the only payment that she would be entitled to and that he would have nothing to do with the little girl. It was a shut-up and go away payment. Once the agreement was signed however, John did not make the payment. Mitra lost her job with the agency that sent her out on appointments and she was on her own with little education, no income and no support from the father of her child.

Mitra borrowed money from friends to hire a fancy high priced lawyer and got nowhere and received nothing …but a bill for about $80,000. She sold her car and her possessions in order to live and then one day she found my book. Because Mitra was my first client I did not charge her a fee. It took me much longer to navigate the system because there was a lot that I was still learning about how the courts work. Mitras case was very complicated. I cannot discuss many more details other than to say that it took nearly a year for her to begin to get some relief on her case but in the end she was able to collect her money. She got it in dribs and drabs – $190,000 here, $80,000 there but within a year and a half she had collected all she was entitled to.