Amponsah, a Ghanaian based in the United States, shared his story on SVTV Africa’s Daily Hustle Worldwide show with DJ Nyaami.
Before traveling abroad, Amponsah was married and running multiple shops in Ghana. “I used to sell goods and had stores in town. Before leaving for America, I bought my wife a car, built her a house, and left the stores for her to manage,” he said.
In 2018, after working hard in the U.S., he decided to bring his wife and four children—three girls and one boy—to join him. At the time, two of the children were in school, while the younger two stayed home with their mother. Amponsah worked multiple jobs, personally dropping one child at school every day.
However, things began to change. “One day, I told her to take good care of the kids, and she told me she came to America to look for money,” he recalled. Later, she told him she was traveling to another state, Wisconsin, to visit her sister. Soon after, Amponsah discovered she had packed ten bags and planned to relocate with the children.
According to him, they moved into a basement apartment and began demanding more money from him—double rent payments. She also requested his Social Security number. “They taught her how to rob me and make me pay child support,” Amponsah claimed. Eventually, he began paying child support from almost three paychecks. He said his ex-wife even gave the children’s Social Security numbers to her host so they could claim tax refunds.
Amponsah went to court, where he was ordered to pay support for his two biological children and her other two children. He said he is now blocked from speaking to his own children and she has tried to change their last names.
One time, while staying at a hotel to meet the children, he was informed that his eldest son had been in a car accident. “I rushed to the hospital and stayed there for two days taking care of him. But afterward, she stopped answering my calls,” he said. The family has since moved to another state, and Amponsah does not know their current location.
Reflecting on the situation, he expressed concern that many children of single parents end up in trouble. “Most of them end up in jail or being misled because the parents are busy working and have no time for them,” he said.
Amponsah explained that he and his ex-wife had been together for a long time before marriage and had their first child before he received his visa to travel. She was a seamstress, and he later handed over his shop to her. They had all their children in Ghana before he brought them abroad.
“I have never married anyone else to this day. I think she was influenced. She even wanted to come back, but I told her she had to remove the child support order first, and she refused, so I didn’t take her back,” he added.
Since 2019, Amponsah says he has struggled to make progress toward his goals. Although they completed their house in Ghana, she now claims it belongs to her children alone.