Here are some potential defenses you can consider. I cut back on support payments because (and these are all true): 1. As disclosed in my financial affidavit, my expenses far exceed my income. This is primarily due to ongoing legal expenses, which are reasonable under the circumstances. In order to meet these expenses, I must borrow money using a credit card. If I must borrow money to meet my monthly expenses, by definition, my existing income is inadequate to allow me to pay support. This should not come as a surprise to the court. It was all predicted in my financial affidavit. 2. I disclosed on my financial affidavits monthly school tuition payments for the kids' school. Additionally, this expense is considered in my child support calculations. The manner in which I pay that expense is in one lump in August every year. For the first several months I was making support payments to Donna, I was not making any tuition payments. But August is coming up, so I have been making payments to the school as well as saving money to prepare for a final payment in August. It may be argued that I could just as well have the school bill me monthly. But this has never been the way I have paid the kids' school in the entire five years we've had children in it. And this argument really amounts to nothing because whereas they may argue that it currently artificially hurts my ability to pay support, it just as much artificially boosted my ability to pay in the months of October 2005 through April 2006, and will again after August. The fact of the matter is, my expenses exceed my income. 3. [This one is not applicable because I have no cash reserve.] The nature of my work, writing software, involves project work. As is standard in my industry, I frequently have to change jobs after projects wrap up. The project I am on at work is wrapping up. No new project has been identified for me to work on. Therefore, based on my past 11 years of experience in this career, I have a good reason to believe I may be out of work for a period very shortly. In the past, I always had extra money in the bank to cover our expenses should I experience a break in employment between jobs. (For instance, when we separated last year, I had $40,000 in the bank.) Now I am living from paycheck to paycheck and have no cash reserve. This is not wise and does not reflect the state of my "normal course of business" as it has existed for the past 11 years. (I disclosed this in testimony to the court at the temporary orders hearing.) I feel that cash re-building that reserve hinders my ability to pay Donna the fully ordered support. And I feel that building up that cash reserve is a reasonable measure to insure the financial stability and security of myself and our children. When the court made its support order at temporary hearings, it apparently ignored my inability to pay (as disclosed in my affidavit, which was never challenged), thus making this inevitable. Since (1) Donna has not demonstrated a good faith effort to financially provide for herself and the kids, (2) she has consistently misrepresented to the court her intentions for employment and her status of employment, and (3) she has suffered at least a $12,000 loss due to what the court has already judged as voluntary underemployment, I think we should request that the court lower the level of ordered support, as well as deny her the attorney's fees she requests. (The fact of the matter is, while I have already paid $2,800 of her attorney's fees, she has never once, in the entire 13 months she has used his services, paid him. Consider this: he is working without a retainer. This is irresponsible and an undue burden on me.) I warned Donna in writing, as early as January, that my expenses would soon prevent me from being able to make the full support payments. Her response was a mere, "I don't have a solution." Well, she did have a solution to prevent any financial hardship this has caused her: to earn the money the court imputed her, but she chose not to. If one were to look at my credit card statements, it might come under scrutiny that I have made a lot of home electronics purchases recently. This is because a lot of things have broken in the past year and I finally got around to replacing them. These are not atypical expenses for our household, and I made Donna aware of most of them. These are the items that were purchased: - I replaced two computer monitors in the house. One needed to be replaced because I had to return one I was using that belonged to my employer. The other which needed to be replaced was on the kids' computer and was very old, getting quite blurry and had color distortions. - I replaced a portable, traveling DVD player for the kids that quit working. - I replaced a VCR the kids use that quit working. - I replaced a CD player I've had since the mid-eighties that stopped tracking discs properly. As for calling my wife's actions evil: As Christians, my wife and I profess to believe that the Ten Commandments are God's law and portray an accurate view of morality. One of the things forbidden as evil in the Ten Commandments is adultery. The one who is guilty of adultery and doesn't want to acknowledge it will naturally feel uncomfortable when confronted with it. This is why my wife has felt harassed, not because she has been abused in any way. In the vernacular of Christianity, not in crassness or crudeness, I have called her adulterous actions exactly what they are: wrong and evil. I confronted her with that not only because of the harm her actions have caused me, but also because of the harm they have caused our children. If it is a crime to be distressed and indignant at a spouse's infidelity and abandonment, and additionally, a crime to confront a spouse with that violation, then let this court know that I am indeed guilty, as have been multitude others who have stood before this bench. If the court were to deny me such a moral perspective, it would violate my freedom of conscience to regard my marriage vows with the seriousness society and the state have traditionally assigned to them. And if the court were to condemn me for communicating this perspective to my lawful wife, it would be an intrusion that violated my right to privacy within my marriage. Because of certain personal actions, Mrs. Brown may indeed feel uncomfortable with -- maybe even harassed by -- my perspective. But such feelings are not the result of abusive conduct, but rather, the result of the domestic relations that accompanty to a marital relationship. That discomfort has no appropriate remedy in this court, just as the enforcement of the marriage vows themselves have no remedy in this court. If it is a moral violation to examine the actions of another person and determine whether they be right or wrong, good or evil, and additionally, a moral violation to tell that person that what they are doing is wrong or evil, then this court is guilty of this moral violation virtually every day. I have cursed at her, so she can complain about that. But how uncommon is this between divorcing spouces?