u/LanternSable

I am sitting here looking at my bank account wondering how I am going to cover my sons braces this month while my ex-husband is apparently living his best life in Mexico. We have been divorced for three years and it has been a constant battle to get even a dime out of him. Every time we go to court he shows up in a thrift store suit with "proof" that his freelance business is failing and that he is basically living on ramen. The judge actually lowered his payments last year because he claimed he was making less than minimum wage.

Well, yesterday a mutual friend sent me a screenshot of his private Instagram. He is at a five-star resort in Tulum, drinking expensive cocktails and posing in front of a private villa. He even tagged a post with some nonsense about "crypto life" and "trading gains." This man has not paid a full month of support in over a year because he says he is indigent. I know for a fact he was always messing around with Bitcoin and USDT back when we were married but I never took it seriously then. Now it seems like he is hiding his entire income in digital wallets while our son has to wait for basic dental work.

I called my lawyer and she said it is incredibly hard to prove crypto holdings if he does not disclose them. He does not have a "boss" I can garnish wages from and he is smart enough not to keep the money in a local bank. It is like he is a ghost on paper but a king on the blockchain. I am beyond frustrated. I feel like the legal system is twenty years behind these scammers. He owes me over twelve thousand dollars in back support and I am tired of playing nice while he hides behind "market volatility" and anonymous wallets.

Has anyone actually successfully tracked down crypto assets in a child support case? We are in Florida and I know the courts here can be strict but I need a way to force him to open those apps in front of a judge. I have the screenshots of his vacation but my lawyer says that is "anecdotal" and does not prove he has the liquid cash to pay. It feels like he is laughing in my face from a beach while I am working two jobs just to keep the lights on. I am not trying to be greedy, I just want what is legally owed to our kid. If he can afford a three thousand dollar a night villa he can afford a pair of braces.

I am seriously considering hiring a private investigator who specializes in digital assets but I do not even know if that is a real thing or just something from a movie. I just want to know if I am fighting a losing battle here or if there is a way to pin him down. The stress is honestly making me sick. I can deal with him being a deadbeat dad emotionally but the financial gaslighting is where I draw the line.

I put in my two weeks notice on Monday after landing a solid offer at a firm that actually uses a modern tech stack. My current lead is a nightmare to work for and the whole department feels like it is stuck in 2005 with zero documentation and a lot of manual busywork. When I handed in my resignation my manager pulled me into a private meeting and offered me a 35% raise on the spot to stay. They also promised that they would hire a junior to take the grunt work off my plate so I can focus on the higher level architectural stuff I actually enjoy doing.

On paper the money is great and it would put me way ahead of my original five year plan. But I have spent the last eight months being micro-managed and ignored every time I suggested an improvement to our workflow. Now that I am halfway out the door they suddenly have the budget and the vision to fix everything that made me want to leave in the first place. It feels like a total trap to get me to finish the Q3 migration before they find someone cheaper to replace me with. I have heard the horror stories about people taking the money only to be let go three months later once the knowledge transfer is complete.

I am worried that if I stay the "junior" will never actually be hired and I will just be the most expensive person doing the same soul-crushing tasks. The new company is offering slightly less than this counter-offer but the culture seems way more professional and they actually have a CI/CD pipeline that works. My gut is telling me to just run and not look back but that extra cash is hard to ignore when I think about my mortgage and my car. I have seen a lot of conflicting advice on whether the "never take the counter-offer" rule is still a thing in this market.

Has anyone actually stayed after a counter-offer and seen real changes in how the place is run? Or am I just being delusional thinking that a 35% bump will make me hate my boss any less? I feel like the trust is already broken and they are just panicking because I am the only one who knows how to maintain the legacy database .