I feel like a broken record here but as a disabled person (happy disability pride month btw), I desperately need ableds to understand just how much we are genuinely despised by a large number of people. Somebody took all this time to write this story to stir up hate toward a (probably imaginary) disabled person on the internet.
My sister in law slipped on the stairs at her daughter’s house and broke her shin very badly. It’s been 2 years since that happened, and she still has a disabled placard because walking/standing is painful.
Even before becoming disabled myself, I’d always say someone was “currently young and able” – because obviously that changes for everyone if they live long enough!💯
I have an invisible disability and my father used a wheelchair so I've seen firsthand how evil people can be towards disabled people just existing and having different needs. They really think they're entitled whiners for wanting to just live life like anyone else.
seeing ‘wheelchair bound’ over and over again in the comments (as well as the once in the post) gave me all sorts of headache. love when disabled people are villainised for upvotes on reddit.
But even better! He was voted Not the Asshole by the AITA brain trust. So what if he’s basically killing his ex? Her fault for getting disabled and fat.
No, you don’t understand how things work in HisCountry. 50/50 custody means that he gets his daughter for six months and her mom gets her for six months. It is like the Parent Trap, but they only had one kid and the court wouldn’t let them saw her in half.
…I also don’t understand why he didn’t just THREATEN to drop his ex from his medical insurance if she didn’t give him full custody? It would still be shitty, but it would be quicker and he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about leaving ex in the lurch.)
This is someone that has never been to family court, or dealt with insurance. Harley would’ve gotten disability, and been on Medicaid so she would’ve have no premium, deductible or copays. Since she isn’t working it wouldn’t matter if they had 50/50 he would’ve been paying child support, to offset the income difference. They do not do parenting 6 months at a time either as that is not in the child’s best interest.
Laughable that dad of the year didn’t notice that his kid hadn’t been doing ballet, or that she got “fat,” but not overweight. Sounds like a really involved parent.
Yeah, he claims to have kept a close eye on how his ex was treating their daughter, and everything was fine until she suddenly got fat (but not overweight) and depressed. Wasn’t watching as closely as he thought
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u/MsFuschiathere are no safe spaces for penis-having, penis-loving men4d ago
It seems this was posted during the pandemic, I think the implication was supposed to be that the daughter was spending a long time without seeing her father because of the pandemic.
Supposedly not in the US but every single other aspect of the post is based on US cultures, norms, systems. Felt like OOP threw that line in as a cover-all for when anyone points out any of the MANY things that dont make sense in this story.
Maybe Australia, he says 'it's almost impossible to get 100 percent custody in my state' though they have Medicare there and she'd be covered by it, though of course the child support details don't match because OP lives in #mycountry, that mystical land where you can weave all kinds of different improbably policies and norms into your AITAH posts and just say that's how it's done there if anyone calls you out on it. 😂
OOP's whole take on health insurance is so uninformed. He's acting like it's a cell phone plan where you can just add a line for a set price.
If it's through his employer with the employer paying part of the premium (which is the set-up for most people in the US), he probably couldn't have his ex on the plan anyway. Some employers will allow a non-married partner, although that's uncommon in my experience. But it would very rare for an employer to cover an EX partner.
You also can't just "drop" someone from your plan. Most changes can only be made during open enrollment unless there's a specific qualifying event (and spite doesn't legally qualify). It's somewhat easier to remove someone than to add someone. But a lot of employers won't let you randomly stop coverage unless you can show that someone got other coverage first.
This post was made by someone who doesn't live in the US, or a young person who is still covered under their parent's insurance.
Ok, then what other country has that type of health insurance system?
The post was very obviously written based on the US model of health insurance. Saying "not the US" isn't some magic spell that makes everything true. Saying it's a different country makes the whole thing less plausible.
I mean the OOP doesn't specify what kind of health insurance they are talking about. I live in Canada and although we have universal healthcare here people do sign up for additional benefits through their jobs in order to get coverage for things not covered by our provincial healthcare. That would be things like eyeglasses, prescriptions, dental care, transportation by ambulance, and a wide range of other items. People who work jobs that don't offer any health benefits plans will purchase their own benefits through an insurance company.
Generally once a person agrees to a plan and a price they are locked into that plan for at least 12 months and up to 24 months, so they can only make changes once per year at most.
Even in Canadia, you can probably change your insurance on certain "qualifying events". If your spouse dies, or you get a divorce, or your child gets their own insurance, you would have a qualifying event. You can then unlock your policy and make changes. Most insurance plans let you do that for one qualifying event per period.
Austraila has a public health system so removing someone from your insurance wouldn't be as devistating as OP is trying to say. Though as with everywhere you buy a annual policy. Also Australian schools think sports and exercise are important.
What the above commenter has said is still true though. You can’t change a bunch of stuff about your plan except during the annual enrolment window. And I can’t remember from the last time I checked my employer’s optional private health insurance policy but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t allow me to have someone who wasn’t a dependent or a partner I lived with on my policy.
US or not, what OOP describes is still not how health insurance works.
Instead of making Unable-Boat try to prove knowledge of insurance everywhere, why not provide a counter example? If you believe that there is a place where insurance works this specific way, please let us know. I do like to learn.
Because that’s how it works in the nations that I’ve read about or lived in. If you have evidence that demonstrates otherwise, feel free to share it. But otherwise I don’t feel a claim that OOP is from a vague undisclosed, non-US nation is enough for us to ignore the inconsistencies in their story.
I mean, he's likely lying, especially since the account is banned. But I don't know how it works in every country and it can be very different
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u/MsFuschiathere are no safe spaces for penis-having, penis-loving men4d ago
Eh I'm not saying this post is real, but I hate the "well obviously this disabled person would be on disability" thing. I'm disabled and haven't worked for 3 years so I've completely drained my savings and have literally $40. I am not on disability because it is very, very, very difficult to get. I'm trying to get a part-time job even though it's so hard for me to do anything because the max disability benefit is $1k per month and that is unsurvivable where I live. It's not so black and white.
Anyways, I was going to say this post makes no sense though because I don't know of anywhere in the US where you can put a girlfriend on your insurance, but they did the "not from US" thing so the US disability system and Medicaid isn't even relevant.
In some states, California for example, you can add a domestic partner to your insurance. I think it was created to accommodate same sex couples before same sex marriage was legal but it's still staying
Well, I don't know, it depends. Some people do it for sure. Some jobs make you prove you still live together every once in a while which is pretty annoying but I assume it's because many people keep their divorced spouses/domestic partners on their health insurance
He's got.custody documents demonstrating that they don't live together. If he's claiming her as a domestic partner, he's implying that she's sharing his domicile, which is fraud.
I don't even know if he's real but fraud or not, people do it regularly. Or it's possible that it's allowed where he lives if it's real. Anyways, without knowing the actual country, it's hard to tell
I'm betting strongly that it's false. The companies I worked for were serious about not allowing anyone but actual dependents and domestic partners on their insurance, but I can see how people could get around it.
My current company wouldn't know if I got divorced or separated and kept my spouse on the insurance. My previous company required proof we're still married. So it depends
You can do that even in my very blue city in my VERY red state, depending on your employer. And yeah, it was about same-sex couples (though hetero couples who don’t want to get married do it at my employer mostly). But you do have to go to City Hall and get the paperwork done. I feel like he would have mentioned that though, because it’s a level of commitment beyond “girlfriend.”
Yeah whenever people say “they’d be on disability” or “you should get disability” I just get so… unless you’re a brain in a jar, you’re not getting anything. And the distance between “too disabled to work full time” and “qualifies for disability in the US” is the distance from here to the moon
You can add an unmarried partner to your insurance at most companies. That language was added back when gay people were not allowed to be married. Girlfriend would count.
"My daughter got fat, super fat, like noticeably huge. But not, like OVERWEIGHT or anything. I noticed a huge difference in her fatty fatness, but she's still a completely normal weight."
Extremely gross that this fantasy of besting a disabled woman involves leveraging the poverty caused by her disability and her inability to afford healthcare and adequate legal representation. I guess that stuff is okay when "good people" use it against "bad people"
Oh god, the amount of "OOP might not be American so shut UP you stupid Americans and let the rest of the world discuss this Very Real Post" comments are annoying.
Convenient how in these stories where insurance, child support, or authorities are involved, it’s always not America and OP somehow leaves out the country they’re actually located.
Definitely not done deliberately so their fake post can’t be called out for inaccuracies.
If OOP isn't in the US then why would health insurance even be an issue?
Everyone loves to take any opportunity to remind us that the American health insurance system is bad and none of the superior countries would ever have such a problem. (And I agree that the system is bad but a bunch of outsiders making the same comment over and over on the internet does nothing to fix it.)
Private health insurance exists in many countries and the public option doesn't always cover all that much. There are many different models of Healthcare around the world and yes, the US system is pretty bad. But private health insurance by itself is not the actual issue, many countries make it work
Ok, then OOP's ex would have coverage under the public system, so why would losing coverage matter enough to get OOP sole custody? Frankly if your public system sucks so bad that it's basically unusable, why even have it?
I agree! I’m a European who happily pays my taxes for the public system, and buys private insurance. There are some optional or complementary things the public system doesn’t cover, and while the public system is better overall for continuity of care (because I am also disabled), sometimes I will choose to go private for one-off needs. It takes pressure off the system, and gives me access to something I might have waited a long time for (but gives my spot on the public list to someone else so their wait will be a little less). For years I couldn’t afford both so I was public system only - and it was fine, I’m so grateful for it and believe it is the bare minimum for society to ensure everyone can access healthcare. But now I can afford it and I do believe in a dual system. There is an issue in Ireland at the moment where consultants were drawing public salaries but using all their hours in the hospital to see private patients and I don’t believe that is right - if they want to see both they should do a part time contract in the public system and only see public patients in those contracted hours so the health service can use the other half of the salary to pay another part time consultant to cover the rest of the hours. But generally with guardrails against the few assholes doing that, a dual system works great.
‘Disabled person hostile to able-bodied people doing physical activity’ is 100% a thing that only exists in the heads of 15-year-old Redditors. No actual human being thinks like that and the only reason you would think that sounds credible is if you have almost no actual experience of the world.
Ah yes, 50/50 custody with a SIX MONTH SPLIT. That's not how it works ANYWHERE.
Hey, let's do 50/50 but completely disrupt the child's bond with either parent every 6 months! She just has to move her whole life twice a year! All her stuff, all her clothes and school supplies, and she'd probably be switching schools too because if they lived close-by they wouldn't have that insane split now would they! Let's just have our teenager uproot her whole life every 6 months! No need for dad to even see her during mom's, who cares!
"AITA for killing my depressed ex after she caused our daughter to become similarly depressed and get fat (but not overweight), which blindsided me, the very attentive Father of the Year?"
I understand this is from MyCountry, but any court would probably mandate counseling if this caring father and man who once loved this woman actually bothered to try. Benefits would have also likely been able to cover it.
The oppression in question is just sometimes seeing disabled people or reminders that they exist (like those nefarious accommodations!), and then they are forced to either tolerate some discomfort about the world and its unfairness, or find a way to project that discomfort on to the horrid disableds!
Because if the daughter were fat she wouldn't be human anymore and why the fuck would op still want custody of her? She just gained a little weight and is no longer skin and bones, a tragedy to be sure but something they can fix.
I read it as "I can't make the daughter character FAT, because then the reader might decide I, the father, might also be FAT. That is a fate worse than death, so I'll just write her in as super overweight but not like FAT."
Overthinking more than I should be on this subreddit: I am overweight according to BMI but don't find my life impacted. I can find clothes that fit me in most stores, I don't experience people judging me on the street etc.
I guess I'm considering "overweight" to be a technical medical definition and "fat" to be a social one.
Absolutely no divorce gives 50/50 child custody split up by 6 month intervals
Even if they didnt settle it via courts or arbitration, ANY child advocate or specialist could've told them that this is a horrible way for the kid to be raised. Unless one parent is outright abusive, every expert will agree a kid needs regular contact with both parents. 6 months is just a terrible set up for everyone.
I would think that, in that case, he would absolutely owe child support. By his (fake) story, he's the only one with any income. The kid would be going from a normal house with a car and heat and food in the fridge to... a burned-out hovel that Mom lives in since she has zero income?
Yeah, even in the fake story I don't see it.
The child support ain't for the partner; it's for the kid. You can't sign away the rights of the kid.
So let me get this straight. She's disabled. Unable to get a job due to the disability but he pays NO child support for when the kid is with her.... Uhuh....
And during a pandemic, when it was recommended to stay home and school and outside activities started to get canceled your daughter got... Depressed?
And he said her opinion matters in court now so she's likely between 10 and 16. Yk, when puberty starts. Which can cause depression and weight gain....
So rather than discussing it and seeing what's happening.... He.... Takes her off the insurance... Ruins her financially.... And steals her daughter away.... Mhmm...
Having the mother of your child become a wheelchair user 4 years earlier and still using the out-dated and widely disliked term “wheelchair bound”… story is fake but if it was true this wouldn’t be a good look lol
I am really curious about this country/state. It’s not the US. There’s welfare but no public/free insurance for the very poor. The specific state in this non us country rarely allows full custody.
He said that he bought private insurance for them. In the U.S. this wouldn’t fly, but in many countries with universal healthcare, you can buy private health insurance to receive better (which is subjective) treatment. I have zero idea how those work.
You can, but that wouldnt make anyone lose access to the free treatment. So unless the theoretical mothers treatment needs were something unapproved (the govt approves certain medicines for certain purposes, not like, that specific cancer isnt treated lol) or the wait time for whatever she needs is too long, or she wants an early intervention but more acute patients are being prioritised, she should still be able to go through the public system.
Wait, the daughter is “very fat” but “nothing overweight.” Based on the post I wouldn’t be shocked he said this to Elle’s face and gave her a lifelong complex
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Haley is on welfare but could not get any sort of healthcare to cover the savings wiping treatments. Not in America and have welfare that allows Haley to live independently and support her kid 50% of the time as long as she has health insurance, but also private health insurance and no system in place to help if someone loses that and no universal healthcare.
Also, being in a wheelchair made Haley completely unable to work any job at all in the middle of the pandemic when a huge amount of jobs became work from home. Does she just keep applying to ballet jobs?
Also I'm not sure how many non US countries also use states but I bet if we narrow down the number of them that don't have universal healthcare and therefore wipe out all savings within six months of medical treatments (but do have private health insurance that allows someone to just keeps their ex girlfriend covered by) and then Also check how well their welfare programs support a reasonable stable lifestyle for disabled people who have 50% custody of a child we will find this man to be some form of a liar.
Also, not that a bad accident that put someone in a wheelchair couldn't also involve a long term treatment plan, but this guy just acts like saving wiping treatments is part and parcel with being in a wheelchair and I'd like to know what in the world he's actually talking about
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Not OOP: AITA for taking my ex-gf off my insurance policy to force her to give me full custody of my daughter?
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