Concerns of a Single Mother (from "My Short Stories (Book One)") - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Regarding a letter written to the Family Responsibility Office (FRO) of Ontario)

Family Responsibility Office (FRO)

Toronto, Ontario

To Whom It May Concern,

Hello, my name is Heather Taylor.  I am a single mother who is writing this letter to the FRO staff, to tell you (the staff) what has happened in my particular case.  I am fervently hoping that someone there will read this letter and publish the pertinent facts of my case on the FRO web site.  I am intentionally leaving out our son’s and his father’s names for this reason.  I do not expect anything to change what has happened to date, but I would like to help other single parents who may find themselves in a similar situation to mine.  I read the article on the FRO web site called “the Senate Hearings on the implementation of a Child’s Rights in Canada” and I’m convinced that my case is one of the ones that “fell through the cracks”.  Here is my story.

My divorce is now 22 years old.  It happened in early 1988 when our son was only 4 years old in Calgary, Alberta.  The judge asked me during my divorce hearing (from which my now-ex-husband was absent) whether I wanted sole custody of our son, and I, of course, said “yes”.  Little did I know that, because of this single judicial decision that went in my favour, our son would ultimately be denied access to his father and a child’s right to financial support.  I then later moved to Toronto, Ontario so that my son could have more exposure to his relatives (on my side) who all happened to live in and around Toronto. 

After his father got re-married and, upon the birth of his second son with his second wife (in late 1991), he unilaterally decided not to see our son anymore, or willingly pay me child support any longer.  Despite the fact that I later went to the Ontario courts and obtained an Ontario court order for child support (in mid-1992), I have not received any support since at least late 1992.  That was about 19 years ago.  Our son is now almost 27 years old.  I doubt that his “deadbeat dad” will ever be forced to pay child support to me despite my efforts in this regard.  From what I have seen on the FRO web site, the divorce and family laws badly need to be reformed and have not been enforced the way that they should have been.

Here is something else to consider.  Upon his second separation, my ex-husband is willingly paying child support (to my knowledge) to his second ex-wife and, yet, I expect that my 19-year-overdue child support will never be paid to me.

Here is an excerpt from the FRO web site about this very issue:

“The Canadian Children's Rights Council believes that a truthful complete review of the rights of Canadian children would be embarrassing to the government of Canada.

Interestingly, the issue of the lack of enforcement of Canadian children's rights is fast becoming the focus of the [Senate] hearings.

The failure of the provincial, territorial and federal governments to provide for the rights of Canadian children is quite evident.”

And, here is another excerpt from the same article, further down:

“Children's rights to their relationships with both parents in cases of divorce, separation, or for parents who never lived together, have been ignored.”

To conclude, I wish to state, for the record, that I raised our son virtually by myself with little or no help from his father from the time our son was 6. While our son would have benefitted greatly by having his father available, because of his father’s blatant negligence to be a physical or financial presence in our son’s life, a great deal of harm occurred. Namely, his education suffered and his attitude and emotional stability were definitely not what I would consider acceptable during his pre-teens and teens. I feel that even if it is too late to do anything about this case anymore, I want to share what has happened with other custodial parents to inform them that the various levels of government are failing our children badly in terms of divorce and family law enforcement, and have been doing so for a very long time.

Thus, it is obvious to me, if not to other single parents, that without the emotional and financial support needed by a child in a single parent family, this child may not have the same opportunities as other children to grow up to be a fully functional, happy adult.

Yours truly,

Heather A. Taylor

published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.