seeking questions

I’ve been receiving “restitution” checks from my dad for several weeks now. today I finally remembered to call my mom while she was at work so she could get me the number of the prosecutor’s office. my mom told me that she had run into a family friend who told her that dad got a real job – maintenance man for a gas station company. dad did this from the time that I was 4 to about 12. it’s a lot of work, a lot of on-call time, and a lot of money. the friend told mom he’s working an incredibly amount of overtime. mom also told me that dad has been paying her child support as well.

amazing. dad got a real job with serious and steady money, rather than contracting work. I know mom never liked that, but I respected dad for wanted to be in business for himself and do his own work. I understand why mom didn’t. it wasn’t steady or reliable work, and dad wasn’t always the most disciplined business owner.

so it sounded like we could actually count on dad to keep sending both of us money. I started to get excited – this would make such a difference on my entire life!

I had a little time before my client showed up, so I went ahead and called the prosecutor’s office. the woman who took my call was the only one in the office, as everyone else was at lunch, and she didn’t have access to my file to answer my questions. she took a message.

not even 10 minutes later, I got a call back. however, I was with my client by that time, so I didn’t answer. I hoped I would catch a chance to call back later, but I didn’t. I listened to the message that prosecutor left for me later, which said:

“the petition revoke was filed back in May. He’s been in court twice; he’s due back in court November 19 at 9. Actually, that can’t be right because that’s not a court date – so I’ll check on that. But he has promised to pay that, and we do have a petition to revoke his sentence if he doesn’t pay it.”

I listened to the message a couple of times, then called my mom and repeated what I could remember from it. we agreed that it sounded like “revoke” met that dad was trying to overthrow the part of his sentence that required him to pay me $40,000. everyone agreed – judge, prosecutor – on the day that the judgement was made that it would hardly hold up and I’d likely never see the money. mom and I didn’t think much of the sentence to pay me money. I took it as a very nice and important gesture from the judge, trying his hardest to give the harshest sentence to my dad. it came a long way in my forgiving the judge for allowing my case to drop twice before as a child.

mom was angry that dad was fighting the sentence and no one in the court system had told us – we had a right to know that he had been in court twice. I was angry because just hours before I had gotten my hopes up, only to find them crushed again.

once I was home for the evening, I transcribed the phone message to try to decode it, then did a google search with the words “petition” “revote” and “sentence.” I came up with several very useful sites, including one that said about some random case:

“The trial court sentenced Ashley to the Department of Correction for thirty months, with six months executed, and the remained suspended, and two and a half years of probation… The County Probation Department filed the petition to revoke probation against Ashley, alleging that Ashley violated the terms and conditions of his probation by violating the laws of Indiana or the United States… The trial court subsequently held a hearing to determine whether Ashley did violate the terms of his probation. During the hearing, Ashley moved to dismiss the State’s petition. The motion to dismiss was denied, and the trial court revoked Ashley’s probation and sentenced him to serve the suspended portion of his sentence at the Department of Correction.”

from this, I gather that my prosecutor was using some jargon to tell me that basically, when my dad was originially sentenced, he was given the max of three years – 1 1/2 served, and 1 1/2 suspended on the condition that he repay my undergraduate debt – $40,000. my dad ended up serving under 6 months (half time for behaving is 9 months, early release for getting GED while in prison brings it to just under 6 months). He was sentenced in may of 2005, released in november of 2005. according to my prosecutor’s message, his suspended portion of the sentence was revoked by petition, given that he had made no effort to begin sending me restitution. there must have been some sort of a hearing to officially disclose this, and the second and third court dates could presumably be because my dad has made a motion to dismiss the petition.

in the meantime, he has been ordered to pay. so that must be why he went back to the world of maintenance work, so that he would make enough money to pay both me and my mom. I assume he’s fighting the restitution.

so, while there’s the fear that he is fighting and he could win, there is also the relief that the court system is actually standing up for me. I never expected that they would – I am far too jaded – so I never expected any money. I would be very, very excited to hear that my dad’s motion has been denied and he has been ordered to continue paying me – or else be ordered to spend another 18 months in prison. $40,000 would make an incredible difference in my life. as it is going right now, I’m receiving $100 a week, which is $400 a month – almost my rent. living almost rent free would cut my living expenses basically in half. and with me working, I’m also brining in about $400 a month from that job, which would just about cover the rest of my living expenses. that would mean that I would only need to take out enough loans each year to cover my tuition. tuition is about $2,000 per class. so for next year, I would need $16,000 for tuition, and each year after that would decrease. That’s a bit of a contrast to what I took out this year – $20,500.

let’s look at it this way. if I continued to take out the max of loans – $20,500 – each year, along with my undergrad debt – $30,000 – I would get my degree with over $130,000 in debt to my name BEFORE interest. in a way, you could consider that dad’s money would reduce me to $90,000. my original goal in entering a doctorate program was to somehow graduate with under six digits of debt.

now, after graduating, I may spend two years in a rural underserved area, in which case the government would forgive $50,000 of my debt for those two years. after that, my debt with interest could possibly be $50,000. that sounds amazingly more managable than $100,000.

basically, any way you look at it, getting $40,000 from my dad will change my life. it will reduce my stress over money/debt while in the program, and it will reduce the effect that my debt will have on limiting my career choices after graduating. at the time the sentence was made, I thought, “sure that’d be nice, but it’ll never happen.” now that it may happen, it’s much more than “that’d be nice.” it’s life-changing. I had no idea. I’m glad they judge did this, although I never asked for it. now I just hope it stands up in court, because now I’ve really gone and gotten my hopes up.

now, there is something that this news does change. in my last entry, I felt almost proud of my dad – although estranged from the family, it appeare

d that he was somehow taking it upon himself to send me money. it sounded miraculous, and it made me very respectful of my dad. now, seeing that it’s actually the court’s enforcement, and quite possibly my dad’s ignored reluctance, that is getting this moving, I feel another loss of respect toward my dad. which is actually a good thing. I won’t feel so inclined to contact him again someday if I don’t feel indebted with gratefulness.

I think I need to stop writing about this now. I’ve done far too much thinking about this already. I’ll just have to wait until Monday when I can call the prosecutor and hopefully get everything clarified. maybe she’ll tell me that it would be beneficial for mom and I to appear on dad’s next court date. do you know how amazing that would be? difficult, undeniably, but amazing. I would be interested in seeing dad again after two and a half years, and I would be very glad to be empowered and given a voice to share how important this money actually is in my life – and for my dad to see and hear that. it would be another gift towards healing! but there I go again, thinking too far ahead and getting hopes up again.