Multnomah Falls Again!
After seven years of child support arrears, Multnomah County sent my employer a stop-payment order. For the first time in years, I let myself hope. I was living out of my van, barely surviving. That extra $400 a week felt like a real chance to finally get off the street. Then they called it a “procedural glitch” and came after me again. The same office that told my job to stop deducting suddenly demanded payment with zero apology or accountability. This wasn’t even the first time they’d done this to me. I’m 64. I’ve been ground down by this system for years. I’m writing it down because silence only protects them. Read what they did to me!
Robert S. Bulka
6/2/20262 min read
Here We Go Again
My name is Robert. I’m 64 years old, and for the last seven years I’ve been drowning in child support arrears. Every time a letter from them showed up, I’d tear it up and toss it like toxic waste - nothing kills the soul faster.
Then in February 2026, I opened one. To my shock, it wasn’t another demand for money. It was an official Multnomah County Oregon child support notice sent to my company’s HR department ordering them to stop deducting child support.
I was ecstatic. For the first time in years, I let myself dream. Four hundred extra dollars a week? I could finally escape the van I’ve called home for seven years, get a real apartment, buy decent clothes, fix my vehicle, and stop feeling like a ghost people judge on sight. Living out of a van at my age makes folks look at you like you’re barely human.
After taxes and that brutal child support garnishment, I was making enough to cover everything, but that’s it - just surviving. This felt like my ticket out.
I waited a few weeks for my company to act on the order. Nothing. So I walked to HR and handed them the notice. They jumped on it - and in April, I finally got my first full paycheck. I felt almost... human again.
Then last week (starting May 25, 2026) my phone rang. Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, asking where the hell my child support payment was. Same office that sent the stop order. I thought it was a sick joke.
I ignored the first call. Then a second one came the next day. My stomach dropped through the floor.
I spoke to a lawyer. His verdict was blunt: because these are arrears, there’s basically nothing you can do. They’re going to garnish me weekly until it’s paid off.
I finally called the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office and explained the situation - that their own office had sent the stop notice. The woman on the other end was ice cold. Zero empathy, zero accountability. She chalked it up to a “procedural glitch,” offered no apology, and basically shit on a man whose life they’d been yoyo-ing for years.
This wasn’t the first time. Three years ago they sent me a notice saying I owed nothing after my daughter emancipated - then three weeks later hit me with a six figure bill.
Let me be clear: you do not want to be a man owing child support in Multnomah County. Hell, sometimes it feels like you don’t want to be a man here, period.
I have no real recourse except to pay it. No one in that office will face consequences. They’re above the law, jaded, biased, and unapologetic. I’m writing this because it’s my only outlet. I’m still traumatized and mentally wrecked from the whole thing. Someone needs to be held accountable. These people work for us - no badge or title should shield them from basic human decency and competence.
Now it’s a race: either I pay this off, or I die trying. I’m set on reaching my seventies child-support-free. The odds in court? They’re the heavy favorites. I’m the favorite to drop dead before it’s over.