A California mother was awarded approximately $200,000 in missed child support payments from her ex-husband, after he fled to Canada in 1970.

Toni Anderson, who is now 74 years old, told CTVNews.ca she decided to go after her “deadbeat ex” because it was the right thing to do and she wanted to have money to use in her retirement years.

“It was totally on principle. The money was one thing but I started realizing that we are letting deadbeat dads get away with too much,” Anderson said in a phone interview. ‘Well, you know? It felt great.”

Anderson and her then-husband separated in 1968 and divorced in 1970. That would also be the same year Anderson said her ex-husband fled to Canada, rather than pay the court-ordered child support of approximately $200 a month.

“He did that on purpose … but I just kind of put this whole thing on the backburner because I didn’t have any money to get an attorney to go after him for the money” Anderson said. Their daughter was only three years old at the time.

Soon after the divorce, Anderson said she followed a therapist’s advice not to disparage the father in front of the child. “But she knew he didn’t love her. He wasn’t around,” she said.

As a single parent, Anderson went on to work as interior designer in Los Angeles to afford to raise her daughter -- even managing to send her to Paris for college.

Her now 52-year-old daughter, Lane Lenhart, even went on to own the design company her mother worked at. Lenhart told CTVNews.ca over the phone that her mother “gave me everything that she could.”

But growing up without a father was “traumatic” and “detrimental” she says, and the effects are still felt today.

“I never got a birthday card. I never got a Christmas card,” Lenhart said. “There were times I would be at my grandparents’ house and where he would be talking to my grandmother and would hang up the phone and not want to talk to me.”

When Anderson, who still works periodically to make ends meet, recently learned that her ex-husband had returned to the U.S. and was living in Oregon, she resolved that he ought to finally pay what he owed.

After consulting with a lawyer a year ago, Anderson learned there was no statute of limitations on child support and decided to sue her ex for more than $228,000 in child payments -- which is the original $40,000 owed, plus 10 per cent accrued interest.

She went to her local courthouse to fill out the paperwork and laughs when she recalls being told, “I was the oldest person that ever went there for child support.”


'WE WANT TO EMPOWER WOMEN': MOTHER

“I knew that if we could get him, we would win. He even threatened to leave the country, so he wouldn’t have to pay again,” she said, explaining that they eventually agreed he would pay $200,000.

CTVNews.ca reached out to her ex’s lawyer, but they did not respond by the time of publication.

Lenhart said this was vindication for her mother because when her father was in Canada, “there was nothing she could do … she wouldn’t have wanted to wait 50 years.”

“I’m so proud of my mother. I’m proud that she took a stand for herself,” she said. “There should be more women like her out there.”

Anderson says she wants other single parents not to be afraid of going after unpaid child support from a spouse – no matter how overdue it is.

“We want to empower women to out there and go for it,” she said.