April 2024 CSQ

From Customer to Commissioner
by Vicki Turetsky, Esq.
We all come to child support for different reasons. This is what I learned
along my journey.
To help children, understand the parents’ story. We all have a story, the
personal and professional experiences that shape our understanding. My
story is not unique. To escape an abusive home, I married at 17, and had
my first child the month I turned 18. My then-husband also came from a
troubled home. Our families experienced mental illness, substance use,
family violence, incarceration, and suicide. We divorced 10 years later and I
then raised our children mostly alone.
Until my children reached their teen years, we stayed afloat through a
combination of earnings, child support, and public assistance. My part-time
jobs included department store clerk, restaurant cashier, waitress, museum
docent, and correspondence school instructor. None included health
insurance or sick leave. I was fired from one job when I became pregnant
with my second child, and fired from another when my children had chicken
pox and I had no back-up care.
Some years we received child support and some years we didn’t. At one
time or another, we benefited from public and community assistance,
including AFDC, Food Stamps, WIC, EITC, Medicaid, Section 8 housing,
free school lunch program, commodity cheese, food banks, public health
clinic, and legal aid. I shopped at Goodwill and yard sales. We did not have
a car. Now I know, based on the types of public assistance we received,
that our household income was at or near the federal poverty threshold for
a decade.