This began in March 2024. We only needed temporary help. Denied by state of NJ in every way. Currently owed 17K in child support. NJ/ NY refuse to enforce court orders, even w/ proof of willful nonpayment. Please sign my Change.org petition! https://www.change.org/Enforce_NJ_Child_Support-by_Tanya_Zakk ? Venmo is @Tanya-Zakk. Please refer to Update #61 (3/21/25) for a summary of what happened. (*PLEASE NOTE THE DATES OF DONATIONS!) March 2024~ I'm a single mom of a 17 yr old boy. He's a junior in high school. Things started to go bad on April 1, 2023 & it's been a domino effect of bad events. I'm 49 & haven't had it easy in my life. I'm a Born Again Christian & so is my son. I'm really trying to trust Jesus. My faith has never wavered. I pray all day, every day. I have PTSD. I've had many therapists. I also suffer from depression & anxiety. I grew up in a VERY dysfunctional home. I was physically abused all through my childhood. I was kicked, pushed, slapped, spanked by my father... for the simplest of mistakes. I was a very good kid. The last time I was hit, I was 16 & backhanded in the front seat while alone in the car w/ my dad. I'll never forget it. I also grew up witnessing my father beating my mother. As I got older, I would try to break it up & even called the cops. I tried to shield my much younger siblings... My mom was no saint, either. I witnessed my dad cheating on my mom in our home, with her best friend, while my mom was out. I was 9 yrs old. I knew before my mom knew & held that inside until she eventually found out & they separated for 3 mos. He cheated on her w/ countless women. This has seriously affected me. My parents split when I was 16 & went through a nasty divorce... I left my ex husband when my son was one and a half yrs old because of major drug use & arrests. I have known him since 1st grade. I gave him many chances but it got quite awful & I found drugs in our home. I filed for divorce but quickly went to court & fought for sole custody (before our divorce) which I won. I was awarded full legal & physical custody with supervised visitation for my ex w/ the supervising person/s of my choice. Our divorce was final years later w/ many delays due to rehab stints & incarcerations (my ex).  He's always owed thousands in child support (through the state of NJ). I've called the state hundreds of times. They do nothing. He's never been arrested. He currently owes us almost 9K in back child support. I've struggled to raise my son financially all of these years by myself w/out a college degree. (My parents talked me out of going).  But I worked & provided & kept him in a great town w/ a great school system. I don't come from money & don't receive financial help from family. My ex husband's parents live very comfortably but have refused to help us with a dime since the day that I left their son. (Same goes for his sister, my son's Aunt & godmother). They are enablers &  help him financially, let him live in their home (where he lives now) & paid for lawyers to take me to court to battle me on visitation. (I had a GoFundMe in 2015 to raise money for legal fees after they were able to get the visitation overturned. I represented myself in court- I couldn't afford a lawyer- he owed us 9K in back support at that time. I lost. When I finally got a lawyer, I won.) It's been a rough road. In 2017 I started dating a man seriously. We got engaged in 2022. Me & my son moved in w/ him on July 2nd, 2022. I have a bad back & was struggling physically to pack up an entire house (we were renting a 2 family house) mostly by myself. My son helped but had school, homework, etc. My fiancé refused to help me. He works from home & we lived 8 minutes apart. He had his youngest child 50% of the time (he also has 2 adult children). He could absolutely help. I have documentation.. text msg's & eyewitnesses to arguments about this. I wound up herniating discs in my lower back which also caused sciatica. I also have pieces of fragmented disc that are floating that (still) need to be removed with surgery. This was shown in the MRI that I finally received in August '22 after weeks of barely being able to walk. I was in EXCRUCIATING PAIN. To my shock, this made him angry that he now had to help me move around for the first week or so.  This was heartbreaking to me. I couldn't get an appt for an epidural of the spine until that October. In the meantime, we still had many things left in our old place that needed to still be packed & moved. HE STILL REFUSED TO HELP. My family didn't help. I had to continue (with my son) to finish up, which took weeks. It made things worse on my back. He also made me continue doing the housework at his (our) home. He refused to help me unpack. Everything started to change & he treated me awful. (There were witnesses to this including my son, my family and some friends). The epidural helped tremendously. Not 100%, though. The next few months the pain started to come back little by little. We started arguing alot & he became physical during arguments (which didn't help my back). I still loved this man very much though, wanted it to work & begged him to go to counselling w/ me, which he refused. We were together for 6 years! Countless memories with our children, holidays together, every birthday of all of ours celebrated together for all of those years, vacations, etc... We still had our good times & normalcy through this rough patch...  April 1st (April Fool's Day) 2023, was the worst day of my life. And my son's life. Me & my fiance had a normal week, hung out together the night before, he kissed me goodmorning that morning... He knew all week that I had to take my son out that day for a dentist appt & haircut. We said our normal goodbyes. When me & my son returned home, my fiancé was gone. Things were missing from the home & I realized that a bag was packed, etc. He wouldn't return our calls or texts. This went on for FOUR LONG HOURS. Long story short, he had PLANNED and figured out a way to have us (& our beloved cat!) removed from our home in THIRTY MINUTES, based on a LIE, with no proof. HE PUBLICLY HUMILATED US. Word spread so fast in our little town that within one week, my son's friends were asking him about it. I believe that my fiancé was trying to beat me to the punch & was scared that I would go to law enforcement. He did NOT know that I had taken pictures weeks before, timestamped, (way before his fake incident supposedly took place), of bodily harm to me. So, I pressed charges for assault. This man knew my whole story... the abuse, PTSD, depression, anxiety... he knew that my son's dad was not in his life. He knew that I had no savings and wasn't working at the time. He knew that we'd have nowhere to go & that I don't get along with my family. This was a court battle that went on for 3 months. He refused to let me & my son retrieve our belongs for THREE MONTHS. We never returned to our home. That day was EXTREMELY TRAUMATIC FOR ME AND MY BOY. The many details throughout this nightmare are all HIDEOUS. The next 3 & a half months were just as bad as me and my son had to stay with different family members and were AN HOUR AND A HALF APART. It was devastating & heartbreaking. I AM STILL IN SHOCK. This man BROKE ME. He broke my spirit. I was eventually able to find an apartment (one bedroom) in our town. I refused to make my son leave the school, town & friends that he loved, especially after all that he had been through. We moved in July '23. Through the months, my pain has been getting worse.  A few months ago, I found out that we lost our health insurance because of moving basically 3 times in one year, not getting all of our mail & so I missed the renewal. They do NOT make it easy to get reinstated. We still don't have insurance. The back pain & sciatica are back to being EXCRUTIATING. It hurts to sit, lay down, kneel, bend over, you name it. The pain is almost as bad as the first week that it happened. I need an epidural badly!! I am also very depressed. I feel & have felt for some time, almost paralyzed. I've never felt like this before. I've always been able to get through, pick myself up... I've always been very strong. But, I'm really struggling. I'm not working because of this pain & we have fallen WAY behind on rent & bills. My son even loaned me the 2K that he had saved up to buy my mom's fiancé's car, so I could pay bills. (He is an angel & honestly, the best kid that I know. He is my greatest gift & such a blessing. He deserves so much more than all of this.) The guilt that I feel over this is enormous. I am able to do the household chores, the daily routine, the motherly tasks, etc. But it's physically painful. I can't imagine doing anything beyond that right now until this pain is gone. We are in the process of being evicted. And our only car was just repossessed. I am beside myself. I don't know how much one person can take. We need help. I am applying for everything I can through the state. But I don't qualify for emergency rental assistance because I owe more than 3 months. (Even though I put in writing to my landlord that he can take my month & a half security deposit & put it towards rent). There ARE charitable organizations that I'm trying...  I'm not speaking to my family anymore. I walked away months ago. It was decades coming. They rarely help & when they do, they berate me while doing it. They gossip about me to other family members & even my ex in-laws! They kick me when I'm down & there's been physical encounters with some family members in the last decade. I told my family mos ago about the money that my son loaned me. They will not help him out. (Even when I reminded them that when I got my license, my parents couldn't afford a car for me- after years of promising my dream car- so my Aunt & Uncle gave me a car for free!) I'm at the end of my rope.  Please share this if you would. God bless you!