(ThyBlackMan.com) Actress Halle Berry is having one heck of a time dealing with her child support situation. According to various media outlets, the actress is fighting it out in child support court with her daughter’s father, Gabriel Aubry. Aubry and Berry have agreed to share custody of their six year old daughter Nahla, and the situation has been contentious for a while.
Halle Berry recently filed to ask the courts to reduce her child support payments from $16,000 per month to just $3,000. Of course this doesn’t sit well with her child’s father, who is fighting for his economic life. With a net worth of $70 million dollars, it’s difficult for Halle to claim that she’s struggling to pay the bills.
Halle’s argument is that Gabriel is living off the payments and not using all of the funds toward his daughter. But the support amount was determined with a formula used in the courts of California based on the total income of both parents. One of Gabriel’s explanations for why he can’t work as much as Halle is that it’s difficult to find full-time work when he’s a stay-at-home dad (it’s also difficult when you’re an unknown model that no one wants to hire).
Here are some reasons why Halle Berry’s child support battle is actually pretty funny:
1) It’s interesting to see women going through the same struggles that men have dealt with for the longest time. To hear famous women say they refuse to support a man (Kandi Buruss once said she refuses to pay alimony to a man and Sherri Shepherd is also dealing with some child support nastiness of her own) is an interesting twist on the battle for equal rights between men and women both inside and outside the workplace. Of course, most of us support equal rights for women and men, but equal rights also come with equal responsibilities.
To say that you want to be the primary breadwinner but will never pay alimony and child support is like saying, “I want to join the boxing match, but I never want to get punched.”
2) I’ve mentioned quite a few times on this blog that poor family planning is the key to financial distress. Having kids out of wedlock or without legal agreements in advance can be economically hurtful for both parties. It’s difficult to give away a chunk of your paycheck already, let alone giving it to someone you despise. I’ve always been baffled by how we can love
someone to death in January and hate their guts by December. Maybe it means that we should take our time when the love drug hits us and try not to make too many rash decisions (in other words, keep the condom on, you might regret doing otherwise).
3) Halle’s claim that Aubry is living off the money is interesting, since there are no laws in place dictating that the parent use every penny toward the child in a documented fashion. Perhaps this case might open the door for some kind of legislation to help all of the parents out there who see their child’s mother/father buying new cars or taking care of their new love interests with child support money. At the same time, child support isn’t supposed to go directly toward the child. To some extent, the custodial parent should be compensated for time and lost opportunities resulting from raising the child full-time. This is without regard to the parent’s gender.
4) There’s no point in complaining about being asked to pay for a situation you agreed to create. I am personally an 18-year veteran of the child support system. I feel like I paid enough in child support to fund NASA for the next 10 years. Money that could have been used toward a new house, a nice car or building a business was being mailed to the courts every month, without me having a clue as to how this money was being used. This experience taught me that if I had another child, I should have that child with someone who has similar values, and even consider getting a “kiddy prenup” to create some kind of legal and financial clarity before the child is even born.
Of course, there is also the option of getting married, which may or may not be a good decision, depending on whom you’re dealing with. The point is that, despite the fact that I was being financially pulverized by my situation, I knew that I had a responsibility to my daughter and a legal obligation to pay the amount that the court ordered me to pay. It was MY situation resulting from MY decisions, and therefore MY responsibility. There was no point in whining about it or calling my daughter’s mother a bum.
Having one ugly child support predicament is understandable. But what it is difficult to understand are the multi-baby mama/baby daddy situations that so many people create for themselves. These episodes compound financial strain with severe emotional chaos on the children who are left behind. Maybe I’m naive to think that kids in the same family can still have the same parents, but the state of some of our families is actually a reflection of the lack of discipline that has taken over the American mating process. The key to learning from a mistake is to avoid making that same mistake again.
Welcome to the rest of the world Halle Berry, where child support courts show little compassion, and the wealthier you are, the more challenging the situation can be. Do we believe that Gabriel is a gold digger? Yes, he probably is, to a point. The truth is that it’s not uncommon for someone to be attracted to a potential mate because of the size of their bank account. We’re just not accustomed to that “gold digger” being a man.
The other truth is that when you are a person of means and someone has a chance to latch on to you financially, you can hardly blame them for doing what’s best for themselves. The key is vetting these people out in advance so that you don’t end up complaining about your situation later on. You may think that you can just go your separate ways without any complications, but if you’re a wealthy person, that man/woman you’re dating may consider you to be the best thing that’s ever happened to them. So, my advice to Halle is that she “Woman Up” and pay for the situation she and her ex-boyfriend created. The child is what matters, and she’s going to love both her parents, no matter how much they might despise each other.
My advice for everyone else? Realize that having a child is a lifelong commitment to both the child and the person with whom you’re having the baby. Make your decisions carefully, they may stick with you far longer than you expect.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.
