In 1976 Kathi Smith-Peterson was left to look after her two small daughters after her husband walked out on the family. To make matters worse she was pregnant at the time.
Kathi, now 59, spent the next 36 years scrimping and saving to make ends meet and to ensure her three children didn't go without. She says she didn't expect to receive more than a couple of thousand dollars from her errant ex and had no contact with him during that time.
But all this changed when the Arizona Department of Economic Security called to say they had made contact with her ex-husband.
In a shock move the Director of the DES, Clarence Carter, presented her with a check for $93,000 which had been forcibly withdrawn from an out-of-state bank account held by her ex.
A delighted Kathi, who revealed the money couldn't have come at a better time as she had been unemployed for 18 months, pledged to share the money with her grown-up daughters saying: “They went without because it wasn’t there then, so why not? Now they can do something they want to do,”
Single parent advisor Julie Mitchell from Gingerbread says child maintenance can be agreed privately between you and your ex, but there is also government help available to enforce such payments.
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