There's a special place in hell. Judge and mother need some some pointers on how to get there.
Ihben tried to find out what happened to Isaac — but encountered more obstacles at Cookeville Regional Medical Center, his local hospital. “The judge had sealed the hospital records. I still cannot get them,” he said.
Required to continue paying child support, despite mother’s disappearance
Soon after seeing his children for the first time after the custody battle, another surprise was in store for Ihben and his family: Ihben’s ex-wife called to say she and the children had been evicted.
After he kept the children for a week, their mother “got a free house, everything furnished and paid,” and the children were returned to her.
“Then she got evicted from there” in May 2020, Ihben said. He again picked up the children — but that was the last they saw of their mother. According to Ihben, after her second eviction, she left town without a trace.
“We haven’t heard from her or seen her,” Ihben said. “It’ll be five years in May.”
Ihben still pays child support to the state, even though he alone takes care of the children. He said the child support money, which remains uncollected, goes to a state fund — and, if it remains unclaimed, will be confiscated by the state when the children reach adulthood.
will be confiscated by the state when the children reach adulthood.
That part of the story is absurd and it gets worse. He knows who his ex wife’s new husband is and yet somehow he can’t locate her to serve her a court summons.
“We put a little flyer together [for the Vax-Unvax bus] and we started passing it out,” Ihben said. But on Feb. 5, the day of his bus interview, Ihben said his wife’s attorney, also her husband — who is the attorney for the local school board — and Burnett, who mobilized the TBI, “tried to scare us into not doing the bus interview.”