Care Benefit

You fantasize about leaving. You will yourself into staying. When indecision presses itself against your eyes and forces them to face the cavernous night, you see no path through the knot of thorns. As you wander deeper into the thicket and feel too imprisoned to make any decision at all, you are choosing. Every moment, a choice. Every choice, riddled with unknown consequences.
 
Here is one more to consider: You choose to act with civility. Through the difficult conversations and the planning for life as a split family, you hold the best interests of your children close to your heart. You and your spouse put aside your own wild fantasies of fleeing, and you remain living close to one another. You share custody through a complex arrangement that attempts to shield your children from the upheaval of a divided life.
 
You split most expenses right down the middle. Without a fight, you take on the extra burdens of time, meals, finances. You forego activities that could further your own prospects due to the intricate inter-dependency of the fragile threads weaving together each month’s calendar. You breathe through your disappointment with the unchanged patterns of your former spouse (and, to be fair, yourself). You surrender short-term control for the sake of long-term peace.  You drive further, and let the other parent be closer to the school or the day care, and pay extra for the gymnastics lessons your ex claims he cannot afford. You keep spreadsheets of health care premiums and soccer fees and co-pays and preschool expenses.
 
You trust, even in the presence of overwhelming doubt.
 
In your parenting agreement, you hash out how each holiday and year will unfold. You make plans for paying for college and for putting money into savings accounts and life insurance to make sure your children are cared for even if one parent decides to give it all up and hitchhike to Vancouver. You agree to review the plan every year. The judge stamps the whole thick tome. With that act, the state holds you far more firmly to a family arrangement than a marriage certificate ever did.
 
You are never rid of anyone. Do not be fooled.
 
Tax time comes, and you believe you have prepared yourself for this. Only one parent can claim the children as dependents in any single year. You were so very thorough. You made sure to write into the agreement that you will claim the children in the odd years and your spouse will take the even years. Every other year, you will receive the tax break.
 
The first year is no problem, because you were still married for most of it, and you are still on speaking terms with the ex. It is easier simply to stay married for filing and split the burden. Then, you begin to organize materials for the year to come. As you sort and sift through tax law, you pull the lid off a foul-smelling bit of news.
 
Only the parent who claims the dependent child can claim the childcare tax deduction. So, even though you will be spending thousands of dollars to ensure your kids have safe care while you are at work, you can claim none of this as a deduction. The government simply assumes all your income is yours, and you are single and carefree. Does that injury need an insult? Well, here you go: because your strained income has no chance of covering a mortgage payment, you also do not receive a tax deduction for home ownership.
 
It’s okay, though. You can start a flexible spending account to pay for dependent care. This is what your HR office tells you. By using a pre-tax FSA , you can reduce your taxable income by the several thousand dollars you will be paying to the day care. The income the feds see as your own will be a few thousand less, and they will come at your wallet with a moderately smaller shovel in April. Knowing the exact amount you will be paying for childcare for the upcoming year and tracking every single expense by way of receipts are tasks you can handle. You have learned through the divorce that your mastery of administrative minutia rivals that of the Queen’s personal secretary.
 
Alas, fate and the IRS have not exhausted their arsenal of gags. Just when you have completed your page of calculations and are about to fill out the paperwork the nice lady at HR sent you, you dig down a little deeper into the tax law. It turns out that you cannot use an FSA for dependent care expenses if you do not claim the dependent children. Even if you are responsible for those children, and even if the state has given its stamp of approval to a legal document indicating you must pay 50% of all childcare expenses, you are still not able to use a flexible spending account.
 
Every other year, from now until your little ones outgrow after-school care, the feds will haul back and punch you right in the gut. It does you no good to see it coming. Your armor is strong, but the smack will still rattle your bones.
 
You spit a few curses into the ether, toss the paperwork into the recycling bin, and take another deep breath. This is an even-numbered year. You will simply need to prepare yourself to get slammed with the tax rate of a single, unencumbered person. In order to do so, you will need to live as if you are anything but.
 
You must remember this:  a family is not the arcane configuration prescribed by the church, the court, or the congress. The laws were written by people who believed in the binary relationship between victory and defeat, between innocence and guilt. They also are charged with protecting those who cannot protect themselves. This is not you, your ex, or your children. You know your immeasurable power rests within the bond you continue to cultivate in this new arrangement of your life.
 
You do not need to win in order to win. No one needs to lose more than has already been lost. Remember you and your children’s other parent were able to craft a bespoke agreement that will hold all of you in its intricate folds. Because of your willingness to draw your own pattern upon the fabric of your family’s life, your children will never need to know it cost you every bit of currency you had in your pocket to create it. They will only know the reward from this complete commitment of resource. They will only need to enjoy the true, simple riches of what this unfolding version of family provides them.
 
Yes, your children will believe they have been wronged. From time to time, your former spouse will try to convince you of that same half-truth. Maybe in April every other year, you will yourself indulge for a day or three in fear and doubt and self-immolation.
 
It is okay. Trust will win out. Soon enough, you will open your eyes all over again to the bright, beautiful gift of this new life. Your children will have two civil, loving parents living near each other and adapting to changing times together. This gift will be theirs to cherish and squander as they see fit, as is the privilege of all children who grow up rooted in abundant love.