If you thought you'd heard every divorce horror story/custody battle case there is, we've got a new one for you. This week, a judge finally awarded a San Diego mom the overdue child support money she was owed when her ex-husband fled to Canada and never paid up. But here's the kicker: It happened nearly 50 years ago — and she's just now seeing the cash.
According to Toni Anderson, her "deadbeat ex" fled to Canada in the early 1970s, when their daughter Lane was just 3 years old.
Anderson told ABC News 10 that her ex-husband, Donald Lenhart, knew what he was doing when he moved to another country, and he never sent a dime in child support.
"I kind of put it on the back burner and just kind of forgot about it over the years," Anderson admitted to the outlet, adding that she supported her daughter through her work as an interior designer in Los Angeles. In fact, in a sweet twist, her daughter now runs the firm where she worked.
But although she footed the bill for Lane's entire childhood, she's now 73 and retired -- and let's just say, she could use the cash.
"I'm not negating the fact I was able to send my daughter to college, Paris," she told ABC News 10. "We traveled and had a good time. But the money runs out."
That it does. That's why Anderson says she now rents out part of her home just to pay the bills. It's also what recently got her thinking back to all those years she struggled, working her butt off to provide for herself and her daughter on a single mom's salary.
And that's when it hit her.
"I realized in the middle of the night one night last year, 'Hey, there's no statute of limitations on child support,'" she said.
That child support, which at the time was just $160 a month, added up to a considerable sum in today's dollars. In fact, a court hearing last Wednesday found it added up to the tune of $150,000.
Now that her ex is back to living in the US, she's finally able to make him pony up the serious cash — and it feels pretty sweet.
Anderson says she hopes her story sends a message to other hard-working single moms out there who may not know their rights.
Just because your child may be grown or even out of the nest doesn't mean you don't still have rights to seeking overdue child support. And there's a lot of of these women out there — according to Five Thirty Eight, a 2011 report by the US Census Bureau found that custodial moms were owed a whopping $12.1 billion in overdue child support. And single moms who are owed support outnumber single dads 9 to 1.
"I don't think enough women get this," Anderson said. "And I think they're afraid."
As for her ex's reaction to all of this?
"I think he's a little bit panicked," Anderson said. "And I'm very happy because I was panicked all these years. Now, it's his turn."
