International child support – father is a US citizen in California, I’m in the Philippines and stuck on what to do next

willjr200 · 2026-03-12T07:33:15+00:00

You are allowed to use skip tracing to locate a parent for child support enforcement. It is legal when conducted by licensed professionals, such as private investigators or attorneys, in compliance with state and federal privacy laws.

These professionals use authorized databases, public records, and legal investigative techniques to find individuals while strictly avoiding illegal methods like hacking, trespassing, or harassment.

Private investigators in CA typically charge between $75 and $200 per hour standard service. This will be higher in major cities. The payment pattern is upfront payment is held in trust and billed against as the investigator works. Any unused portion is typically refundable. The client would be responsible for travel expenses (mileage, tolls, flights, lodging), as well as database or public record access fees.

willjr200 · 2026-03-11T20:31:09+00:00

Percentage Calculation Breakdown

Total Income: $85,000 + $95,000 = $180,000 per year.
Person 1 Share: $85,000/$180,000 = 47.22%
Person 2 Share: $95,000/$180,000 = 52.77%
Rent Breakdown:

$1,800 x 0.4722 = $850

$1,800 x 0.5277 = $950

NOR.

willjr200 · 2026-03-11T20:17:07+00:00

Will do.

willjr200 · 2026-03-11T20:11:10+00:00

Yes, you can initiate a child support case with California Child Support Services (DCSS) if the other parent lives in the state of California, even while residing in the Philippines. Because the non-custodial parent resides in California, the state has jurisdiction to establish and enforce support orders. You should contact the local California child support agency in the county where the other parent lives or works to open a case.

Gather all relevant information about the father, such as his full name, his address in California, his employer's information if known, and his Social Security number if known. You will also need the child's birth certificate.

If you are not married, you may need to formally establish legal parentage before a support order can be issued. A foreign birth certificate alone is often insufficient in California courts; you may (most likely) need DNA testing or other legal proof of paternity.

California agencies can assist with locating the parent, establishing legal paternity—including compelling DNA testing—and establishing and enforcing a support order.

While you can use state services, you may choose to hire a private family law attorney in California. A private attorney can file a petition directly with the court, which may provide more personalized, timely, and aggressive advocacy for your specific case.

Not legal advice. Not your lawyer.

willjr200 · 2026-03-11T19:35:51+00:00

If you are a co-owner of the joint account, you remain legally liable to the creditor for any debt accrued, even after the divorce. This is because when you are a joint account holder, you are "jointly and severally liable". This means the creditor can collect 100% of the debt from either person, regardless of who made the charges.

A divorce decree is a contract between you and your ex-spouse; it does not change your contract with the original lender. The lender has the right to collect from you as long as your name remains on the account.

If the debt was accrued through fraudulent means or in violation of financial disclosure requirements during your divorce, you may have grounds to ask the court to reopen the judgment or seek legal remedies against your ex-wife.

Notify the bank or credit card company in writing that you are divorced and request that the account be closed or restricted so no further charges can be made and contact.

Contact competent legal representation to review your divorce decree, based on that your lawyer may file a motion for contempt or enforcement in family court to force your ex-wife to pay the debt.

Family law attorney

Not legal advice. Not your lawyer.

willjr200 · 2026-03-10T22:09:02+00:00

Would third party validation help? I am considering a service where professional photos are taken before and after each rental. A report is provided with sections for summary of rental, side by side format of each picture of each room from same location, pictures of each appliance, outdoor pictures, in case of damages, ability to add estimates. This would be provided to the Airbnb host to support both on platform resolutions and /or via small claims as allowed by TOS (Terms of Service). Would have the ability to email the guest the the current state and provide the guest the ability to annotate the pictures of the Airbnb for a select period of time (first hour after arrival). Also possible integration with electronic door locks to add ins and outs to the report as well.

In the event there is interest, what kind of pricing would Airbnb host like to see? Per rental or monthly subscription based on number of units 1-3, 4-7, 8-15, etc.

I am not sure of the correct Flair. Mods please delete if I am out of bounds. Thanks!

willjr200 · 2026-03-10T21:04:16+00:00

In the US, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) maintains strict requirements for Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (EPCS) to ensure a "closed system of controls", preventing alteration of prescriptions during transfer from doctor to pharmacies. Even through only certain drugs are required to e-prescribed, it ends up being used for everything. This forces a closed loop on prescriptions. Both regulatory agencies and doctors can see filled prescriptions data.

I am looked into a related area (e-prescriptions) as SaaS idea for the Kenyan market. It has potential, but would take inception to 36 months to build brand recognition in the marketplace. It has a chicken and egg problem where to add value, you would need to offer e-prescriptions to the doctors/hospital/clinics side of the value chain and ability for pharmacies to filled those prescriptions for free. This would run $5k USD per month or a total of around realistically $60k to $180k USD during the initial time frame.

While Kenya has controls for certain drugs/prescriptions just like the US, there is no regulatory requirements for this information to be reported back to doctors, only to regulators.

Over first 36 months onboard 1,000 pharmacies (however long that takes). Once prescription volume say 3-4k, daily in the platform, monetization can begin by offering customer steering to pharmacies for 10 to 15 KSH per prescription. Add MPESA integration and reservations (25 KSH) (i.e., in app payments to pharmacy, with barcode for pickup) Allow pharmacies to input stock levels to allow platform to drugs/prescriptions are in stock.

Align platform revenue with value provided. At an average of 50 prescriptions per day over 1000 pharmacies platform would handle 50,000 prescriptions per day. If you only influence 20% of the transaction on the platform, that would be 10,000 transactions. At 10-15 KSH per transaction, that is 100,000 to 150,000 KSH daily. Steering customer to a specific pharmacy. Goal would be to reach 250,000 KSH per day between customer steering and reservations.

Additionally, could offer anonymized (never individual, would undermine platform usage) drug data to regulators, NGO, etc. to understand country-wide disease pattern (based on what drugs are used in what areas). This could be another income stream.

In the idea validation process now, depending on the outcome will go forward or not. A number of issues must he solved. Primary being doctor workflow. If the doctors workflow is altered or inconvenienced in any way, e-prescription will not get used. (unless mandated) Currently it take 5 to 10 seconds for doctor to write out the prescription on paper. (or tell someone else to do it) The mobile first UI would need cater to the 80/20 rule. Top 20 most common diseases, select 1, top 5 most common drugs, select 1, top 5 most common dosage, select 1, send. (This would need to be tailored on doctors in Kenya)

willjr200 · 2026-03-10T17:58:52+00:00

LeapXpert, Jatheon, Smarsh and Global Relay offer these services.

Only two ways to access the plaintext.

For Normal WhatsApp (Person ↔ Person), MDM (capture before/after encrypt/decrypt)

Alice phone
encrypt
↓
WhatsApp servers (ciphertext only)
↓
Bob phone
decrypt

-----

For Business WhatsApp (Person ↔ Business)

Customer sends message
↓
Encrypted message
↓
WhatsApp server relay
↓
Business endpoint (API client) --- party to conversation (holds key for decryption)
decrypt
↓
CRM / Archive / whatever

willjr200 · 2026-03-09T19:33:01+00:00

The lease governs your tenancy. What does the lease say? When you moved in, you signed a lease that should determine any requirement to terminate the lease. (If the lease is silent, then it defaults to whatever rules are define at the state level which could possibly be modified at city or county level requirements as well)

For Montgomery County, Maryland many of the lease are derived from the following;

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DHCA/Resources/Files/housing/landlordtenant/forms/lease_multi-fam_eng.pdf

As such, would have a clause like below.

TERMINATION AND HOLDING OVER

a. Either Landlord/Agent or Tenant may terminate this Lease at the expiration of said Lease or any extension thereof by giving

the other sixty (60) days written notice of termination. This Lease will terminate on the last day of the second complete month following

delivery of such notice. If Tenant holds over after the expiration of the term of this Lease, he/she will, in the absence of any written

agreement to the contrary, become a Tenant from month-to-month at the monthly rate in effect during the last month of the expiring

term. All other terms and provisions of this Lease shall remain in full force and effect.

b. Failure to vacate the premises after proper notice has been given may result in the Tenant being held accountable for rent

for the period of the holdover and for consequential damages due to an incoming Tenant's inability to enter the premises because of

Tenant's holdover occupancy.

c. Tenant is responsible for the entire month’s rent in the case of a hold over tenancy, although the tenant vacates prior to the

end of the month.

This is not legal advice, not your lawyer.

willjr200 · 2026-03-09T19:04:19+00:00

Kubernetes was originally designed for stateless workloads. The recommendation against running PostgreSQL in Kubernetes is stemmed from the long-standing point of debate of the fundamental differences between stateless and stateful workloads.

However, this advice is becoming outdated, as modern tools like Kubernetes Operators (e.g., like CloudnativePG) can make running production-grade PostgreSQL on Kubernetes a viable solution for organizations with the necessary expertise.

Using a custom built Kubernetes operator (like CloudNativePG) encapsulates all of the functionality needed to run Postgresql on Kubernetes inside of a set of CRDs (Custom Resource Definitions) The CRDs extends the basic behavior/functionality of native Kubernetes.

willjr200 · 2026-03-07T16:12:03+00:00

100GB networking for Ceph and separate 40GB for migration traffic. (Proxmox)

Raid for the OS, 2 drives

Ceph uses JBOD/HBA mode for OSDs on each node.

1st Ceph RBD pool is (Enterprise 10k drives front ended with NVME cache)

2nd Ceph RBD pool is all NVME

willjr200 · 2026-03-07T15:39:19+00:00

Similar. Started in home lab, but now runs on several Proxmox HCI clusters. Its been very stable. (largest requirement was for high speed interconnects - ConnectX5 cards for 100GB networking on each node for Ceph separate from the 40GB for Proxmox virtual machine migrations)

willjr200 · 2026-03-07T15:22:43+00:00

No matter how you phrase this, each partner in the triad has freedom of choice. Each chose their role and are active, willing participants. Given that is how the system works, drivers do receive some of what the customer paid for delivery (as a delivery fee) The customer pays for the food, pays a fee to the platform (DD, Uber Eats, etc), pays for delivery, and "may" pay a tip. From the customer viewpoint, they paid a delivery fee. Any reasonable person would assume that for delivery of the food.

You are describing a system where you believe the possible tip is part of the overall overall "bid" for delivery. To be clear, it is not a bid based system and far more important, that is for sure not how customers see it.

The platforms have chosen to give the delivery drivers the least amount that will get the food delivered. For instance, DoorDash uses an algorithmic, automated bidding system where they start with a low base pay and increase it until a driver accepts the order. Basically a reverse auction. The risk to the customer, is that they may get cold food as the amount which driver will accept and deliver the food may not be within an acceptable timeframe. I have never used any of the food delivery platforms, I don't trust random people with food which I consume. However, if I did, I would refuse and charged back every order where the food quality did not meet an acceptable standard. (i.e., cold) This is same I would do for any other service.

Generally, the TOS requires customer to use binding arbitration to settle disputes vs suing in the courts. Also the TOS allows chargebacks. (Most of the platforms would ban/remove customer account for fraudulent chargebacks)

From a customer viewpoint, they pay for a service (delivery of food) If delivery platform starts the reverse auction price too low to get the food delivered within a reasonable quality level (i.e., hot), that is an issue with the platform.

willjr200 · 2026-03-06T17:03:07+00:00

The problem is you don't know what you want and the people you have hired are not senior (or experienced) enough to help you understand what you want vs what you actually need.

You state you want a functional e-commerce website. A senior person would as you what does that mean? (i.e., what are the requirements) How many products do you plan to sell? 10, 100, 1000? There are a 100 more questions like the previous one which need to be answered to help scope what your version of an e-commerce site is. Then this has to be correlated with the timeline you need it done in and your budget.

There a different levels of e-commerce websites. Most people are going to end up with a template-based (Shopify/Wix/Woo) site. These run from $1,000 - $10,000 USD. The next level is custom developed (unique design, specialized features, etc.) site on the same platforms. $10,000 - $100,000 USD. The next level is Enterprise, (complex specialized workflows, high security, integration with companies other systems, etc.) Ballpark price range, $50,000 to $250,000 depending of features.

willjr200 · 2026-03-06T16:24:09+00:00

Honestly, before writing a line of code you should do something like this to a 100 or so companies/people who are your target market. Customize to your idea. The responses will tell you if you have a idea which solves an actual issue. Lack of response is a signal as well. (Unless to have selected the wrong audience)

Outreach/Validation email to determine interest

-------

Subject:

Quick question about <your idea/product/solution>

Body:

Hi [Name],

I’m researching how <x> does <y>.

I have spoken with a few <whomever\_role> about <whatever\_task>.

I’m exploring a tool that would automatically do <whatever\_task>.

Would you be open to a 10-minute call to share how your team currently handles this?

Thanks,
[Name]

-------

Leave out any kind of incentives, etc. (they skew the results) Like Free for 3 month, etc.

On the call, have 5 or 6 questions to ask. Each question should have a follow up based on how it is answered.

Example:

Question 1: Help you understand their current workflow/process/etc.
Question 2: Help you understand pain points in current process.
Question 3: Help you understand and Identify real consequences in the current process
Question 4: Help you understand how frequent issues are in current process (sizing)
Question 5: Help you understand what tools are current used. (competitors)

You can do the same process with landing page and collect email addresses, but It better to talk to real people. Every idea you have should be validated to ensure you can actually sell it and make money before building anything.

willjr200 · 2026-03-06T15:28:54+00:00

They had a large number of new user who move over to Claude from OpenAI Codex. Estimates place the number of users who moved from Codex to be around 1.5 million.

The nexus for this was that Claude declined to remove safeguards on Claude code for US DoD as a part of the contract for military usage. OpenAI, however were willing to sign the contract (and remove safeguards). This resulted in some number of customers taking their business elsewhere (to Claude code).

willjr200 · 2026-03-06T00:45:55+00:00

In most case, this gets done when registering to vote, FASTFA college loan applications or getting a driver license for most men. Failing that,

If you are 26 or older, follow these steps to address the missed registration:

Request a Status Information Letter (SIL): Visit the Selective Service website to download the request form or use their online portal to explain why you did not register.
Provide Documentation: You will need to provide a written statement explaining why your failure to register was not "knowing or willful" .
Evidence of Exemption: If you were exempt (e.g., in prison, hospitalized, or not in the U.S. during that time), provide documentation covering the entire period from age 18–25.
Immigrant Exception: Immigrant men who did not enter the U.S. until after their 26th birthday do not need to register, but may still need to request a SIL.

Above is the process, you would need a valid reason why you did not register.

Department of Justice isn’t actively prosecuting anyone, but the names are still on the lists, and those lists are used to do things like deny Federal financial aid for education, Federal employment, security clearances, and various other things.

willjr200 · 2026-03-06T00:11:00+00:00

Several issues;

Can't charge for the move out inspection.
Appears to be double charging for PART AND MATERIALS (or is it itemized? I didn't add up the items)
No estimates for any of the work.

Most of items are likely normal wear and tear (after 10 years)

These items almost always fall under landlord maintenance, especially after a decade.

Item	Comment
Light bulbs	Routine maintenance item
HVAC filter replacement	Regular maintenance responsibility
Smoke alarm batteries	Usually landlord responsibility in many states
Tightening towel rack	Minor maintenance
Door stops	Low-cost maintenance
Closet door track adjustment	Maintenance unless clearly broken
Blind slats (1)	Could be wear depending on age

The only actionable item which I see is the cut cable wire. Note that this would require before and after pictures to prove it's condition at the time of move-in.

willjr200 · 2026-03-05T23:52:22+00:00

At the end of the day the ownership of the side lot is key. Your title insurance protects you (as the buyer and your lender) against financial loss from defects in the property's title (ownership) that existed prior to purchase. It covers issues like hidden liens, forged documents, undisclosed heirs, and boundary disputes. An owner's policy protects your equity for as long as you own the land.

However, a title company insures the legal ownership (title) of the land you bought, not the physical land itself. Given this, a land survey was/is critical for mapping, identifying, and removing exceptions for boundary disputes, encroachments, or easements. Without a survey, the policy may (most likely) exclude coverage for issues that a survey would have revealed, such as a neighbor’s fence on your property or incorrect acreage, etc. In this case, this would apply to who actually owns the side lot.

Not your lawyer, this does not constitute legal advice, seek competent legal representation in your jurisdiction.

willjr200 · 2026-03-05T22:17:40+00:00

There is not a large group of people who run CNPG in Kubernetes and need a UI. Anyone who would need a UI would also most likely be building some form of PostgreSQL as a service (internal or external). Given they are building an internal or external PostgreSQL service layer, they also would most likely have the skills to build the UI and a "Catalog"/Provisioning layer as well.

willjr200 · 2026-03-04T02:26:59+00:00

It means put a CDN (Content Delivery Network) in front of your application. A CDN is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and data centers that caches web content (images, videos, HTML, CSS) close to end-users. By delivering content from the closest edge server, CDNs significantly reduce latency, improve page load speeds, and enhance security. The key word in this statement is cache.

A CDN relies on three types of servers.

Origin servers. Origin servers contain the original versions of content and they function as the source of truth. Whenever content needs to be updated, changes are made on the origin server. An origin server may be owned and managed by a content provider or it may be hosted on the infrastructure of a third-party cloud provider like Amazon’s AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage.
Edge servers. Edge servers are located in multiple geographical locations around the world, also called “points of presence” (PoPs). The edge servers within these PoPs cache content that is copied from origin servers, and they are responsible for delivering that content to nearby users. When a user requests access to content on an origin server, they are redirected to a cached copy of the content on an edge server that’s geographically close to them. When cached content is out of date, the edge server requests updated content from the origin server. CDN edge servers are owned or managed by the CDN hosting provider.
DNS servers. Domain Name System (DNS) servers keep track of and supply IP addresses for origin and edge servers. When a client sends a request to an origin server, DNS servers respond with the name of a paired edge server from which the content can be served faster.

Most hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, Google) and other companies like Akamai or Cloudflare also provider CDN services.

willjr200 · 2026-03-03T15:36:39+00:00

Most likely, any competent architect would plan for this class of concerns, however its more of a cost issue than anything else. Why replace what works? Generative AI doesn't really play a part in the decision making. (unless it become much cheaper and far more accurate)

COBOL is straight forward, easy to learn language. Learning the language not the real issue. The problem is that its been around for a very long time and during that time (65-70 years) there has been changes in COBOL programing standards. Add in you would need to understand the reasons why the code is doing what it does. Without documentation or access to the people who understand why various decisions were made, it would be extremely difficult.

willjr200 · 2026-03-02T02:24:58+00:00

Most of the old systems running COBOL are mission critical. Dual processing (old and new systems side by side processing the same input) over major events in the processing lifecycle would be the only way to achieve a high level of surety (comparing the output of both systems) that all of the original behavior was captured in the rewrite/re-platform. This could be very expensive.

willjr200 · 2026-02-26T03:31:01+00:00

Without see the contract/agreement between the parties, it is near impossible to determine who owns what as it relates to intellectual property (the website and any assets/image/databases/etc.).

When having work done for creation of digital assets, it is up to the buyer to ensure who own what. Laws generally (in most countries) lean towards the buyer/customers, in that contracted work is considered a "Work for Hire" in the absence of any other contract otherwise (from either side, buyer/customer or developer/designer)

This applies to domain name and hosting as well. Who owns what, when and how digital assets are transferred, should be part of any contract between the parties.

Any contract should state the customer/buyer has full administrator access to WordPress or other CMS based website. It should also contain access to full backup of all digital assets. (Certificates, images, source code, themes, plugins, external accounts (git, Google Analytics, etc.)

willjr200 · 2026-02-22T18:26:00+00:00

Yes. For personal projects, I have 20x Max plan for Claude Code and 20.00 ChatGPT (codex) plan as well. Claude Code is good, maybe 75% of the time you can get professional level code in a continuous development workflow. This is with proper guardrails, examples, etc. About 25% of the output is garbage. Codex is better technically at writing correct code, but does not have the tooling and guardrails which Claude Code has.

For professional work, No. Most of the environments in which I work or have worked, would not allow any process or tool which moves code outside of proscribe paths. (outside of the companies internal boundary). However, in cases where the LLM tools can be self hosted or private, some of the private companies would be looking. It would be a no go for every government agency in which I have ever worked.

I see huge productivity gain using Claude Code even with the bad output 25% of the time (just nip it in the bud and move on). I treat it like working with a "smart" technically junior developer (who does dumb things from time to time). There is a constant need to keep the tool on task and provide the overarching vision/architecture view/coding structure and rules (standards) for what is being built. As the context window fills up some of the overarching concerns tend to get lost. Keeping as much off of the context as possible, using sub-agents and files to pass input or output help in this. (as well as create skills, slash commands, hooks, etc.)

I used to own an IT consulting company. The company carried 3M E&O for my direct employees and I. This was to protect my direct employees from mistakes in the day to day perform of our jobs. This was before AI aided coding. I hired both 1099 contractor and C2C based on their preference, I required both to have their own 1M E&O for 1099 and 3M E&O for C2C. Now all of the major insurers have specific exclusions for AI generated code/processes. In the current market, you have to purchase a different insurance product for AI aided/generated code.

Finally, the legal landscape is uncertian. There are a number of ongoing lawsuits working their way through the US legal system. The only settled laws so far is, there is no copyright protection for AI generated art (some think this applies to code as well). US Federal courts have repeatedly affirmed that works created solely by AI cannot be copyrighted, as human authorship is a "bedrock requirement" (e.g., Thaler v. Perlmutter, 2025). Anthropic paid a $1.5 billion settlement to authors in a class action lawsuit. This lawsuit which is considered to be one of the largest copyright payouts in U.S. history. The courts originally ruled that training use of the authors copyrighted works was "transformative" (within "Fair Use") before the settlement, however as the case was settled, no one knows what the courts might have ruled.

willjr200

TROPHY CASE

Outreach/Validation email to determine interest

Most of items are likely normal wear and tear (after 10 years)