Social Media Attack: Arizona Is Enemy of ‘Deadbeat Dads’

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced yesterday the state would begin publicly shaming fathers who owe child support by posting on Twitter their names, photos, and the amount of child support they owe. The Twitter account, run by the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES), has already shamed its first dad — and Ducey plans to shame a whole lot more.

“For too long, you’ve been able to remain anonymous, able to skirt your financial and legal responsibilities with no shame,” Ducey said during his State of the State address on Monday. “Well here’s a new one for all the deadbeat dads out there: effective immediately, the state is going to begin posting the photos, names and money owed by these losers to social media, with the hashtag ‘#deadbeat.’”

The issue dates back to a 1999 law requiring the DES to post names and photos of individuals who owe child support to its website. Ducey, who said he’s referred to as the “hasthtag governor,” apparently wants to take it a step further for 421 parents who owe what the state considers to be a significant amount in overdue child support, a DES spokeswoman told CNN Monday. Ducey ended the announcement with a stern ultimatum: “If you don’t want your embarrassing — unlawful — and irresponsible behavior going viral: man up, and pay up.” (Doesn’t all the hubris seem strange in light of all the trouble the state of Arizona is having dealing with property liens and back child support issues?)

from the Verge

Sure, this is unconstitutional, but the downward-spiraling United States doesn’t care about that. Are you worried about an online confrontation? You should be. First, if you are stupid enough to blog and use social media with your real name, perhaps you deserve what you are getting when they find your account and start sending you messages. My advice is to close your current accounts if they are in your legal name and open others – or simply try changing your name on your current account. That just might do the job, but it won’t stop them from broadcasting your name. I can imagine that some hackers like Anonymous are going to go after Arizona’s public accounts and social media. After all, these bullies aren’t all that savvy – just bullies with an attitude. – MJR

Some States Are Cutting Poor Dads A Deal On Unpaid Child Support

Many states have opted for oppression when it comes down to child support debt. A few wiser minds are prevailing in a few places. When the state of Maryland wanted to reach dads who were behind on their child support payments, it started in the boarded-up blocks of West Baltimore, in neighborhoods marked by drugs, violence and unemployment.

In just four zip code areas, the state identified 4,642 people who owed more than $30 million in back child support. Most of that was “state-owed,” meaning that rather than going to the child through the custodial parent, it’s supposed to reimburse taxpayers for welfare paid to the child’s mother.

This is a source of great resentment for many men, who say they want their money to go to their children. But most who owe it can’t pay anyway, as they earn less than $10,000 a year.

“So even if we use taxpayer dollars to chase ’em down, and we catch ’em, right, and we go into their pockets, there’s nothing in there,” says Joe Jones of Baltimore’s Center for Urban Families.

Are they deadbeat?

Joseph DiPrimio, head of Maryland’s child support enforcement office, doesn’t like that expression. “I think that’s vulgar. I don’t use it,” he says. DiPrimio prefers “dead broke.”

“We’re talking about individuals that are economically challenged, they’re underemployed, but they want to do the right thing,” he says.

Unpaid child support in the U.S. has climbed to $113 billion, and enforcement agencies have given up on collecting much of it. They say too many men simply don’t have the money.

What’s more, research shows that high child-support debt can leave parents feeling so hopeless that they give up trying to pay it.

Breaking Through The Distrust

Like a growing number of state government officials, Maryland’s DiPrimio wanted to make parents an offer. But he needed their trust, and that was a problem.

Research shows high child support debt can leave parents feeling so hopeless that they give up trying to pay it.

And sting operations to round up parents who owed child support have happened all over the country, including Baltimore. In a typical ruse, agencies have sent fake letters telling parents they won tickets to a football bowl game, for instance — but when they showed up to collect, they were arrested instead.

To break through years of distrust, Maryland sent letters to parents with the logo of the Center for Urban Families, a nonprofit in West Baltimore that provides job training and other help to poor families.

They made this offer: If the parent takes the center’s month-long employment training course and lands a job, the state will forgive 10 percent of his or her child support debt. If they complete a Responsible Fatherhood program, the state will write off another 15 percent. One of the first persons to sign up was a mother, though the vast majority of noncustodial parents are men.

In a separate “debt compromise” program, Maryland will also write off 50 percent of a parent’s child support debt if they maintain monthly payments for a year.

Response has been slow. In two years, slightly more than 100 parents have signed on. Many of them attend fatherhood meetings like one held on a recent Wednesday night. Two dozen men — 20-something to middle age, in sweats and in suits — sit in a large square.

Some complain their exes won’t let them see their child if they haven’t paid child support. Others don’t understand why it doesn’t count as support when they take their kids out to eat, or buy them clothes — or say they would do those sorts of things for their kids if their child support obligation wasn’t so heavy.

Mostly, like 30-year-old Lee Ford, they say it’s so hard to find work

“You telling me no matter what, I gotta pay. But I can’t get a job to work to save my soul,” he says.

Group leader Eddie White cuts no slack. “If you know you got a criminal record, sure it’s gonna be hard for you to get a job. But it don’t mean you can’t work,” White says.

A big part of this class is also educational. White asks the men what a person who is paying child support should do if he gets laid off or loses his job.

“There you go, that’s the word. Immediately,” White says. “Immediately ask the court for an adjustment.”

Other Approaches To Debt Relief

Maryland’s program is part of a larger effort to keep impoverished parents from racking up child support debt in the first place.

Some states are trying to speed up the cumbersome process of adjusting an order when a parent loses a job. Ohio has experimented with sending simple reminders — by phone, mail or text — to parents who need to send in monthly payments. Texas has reached out to newly incarcerated parents, to let them know they can apply to have their payments reduced while in prison — something not all states allow.

“We sent out a teaser postcard trying to combat the ostrich effect,” says Emily Schmidt, a research analyst with the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, who helped with the Texas effort.

Schmidt says there was concern that someone going through the emotional transition of incarceration wouldn’t likely be thinking about child support, and may not even open a letter from the state. So they printed the postcard on blue paper to stand out, and, taking a cue from marketers, it said, “Four easy steps to lowering your child support.”

After 100 days, the response rate among parents was up 11 percent, “a very low-cost intervention for a fairly dramatic effect,” Schmidt says.

The Obama administration wants to “right size” child support orders from the start, and has proposed regulations to make sure they are set according to what parents actually earn. Officials say some jurisdictions base orders on a full-time minimum wage, even if a parent earns far less. They say this can backfire, leaving so little money after a parent’s wages are garnished that he or she quits and works underground instead.

The White House’s proposals also would provide more job training for parents with child support debt — something Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution says is a good investment.

“More fathers will get a job, more fathers will have earnings, and more fathers will use those earnings to pay child support,” he says.

So far, that’s what’s happened in Baltimore. The numbers are small. But the amount of child support that’s been paid is more than double the amount of debt written off.

Maryland wants to expand its child support debt forgiveness program, hoping to help more parents to pay what they can.

Child Support, Prison & Crushing Debt

Of the 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States, about half are parents, and at least 1 in 5 has a child-support obligation. For most, the debt will keep piling up throughout their imprisonment: By law or by practice, child-support agencies in much of the country consider incarceration a form of “voluntary impoverishment.” Parents like Harris, the logic goes, have only themselves to blame for not earning a living. But that may be about to change.

What does this tell you about overdue child support?

Republicans opposed to new regulations

The Obama administration has authorized a new set of regulations that would reclassify incarceration as “involuntary,” giving parents the right to push the pause button on child-support payments. The regulations are set to be published early next year and implemented by states by 2017.

Congressional Republicans oppose the new policy. They argue that it would undercut the 1996 welfare reform act, which pressed states to locate missing fathers and bill them for child support so taxpayers wouldn’t bear the full burden of their children’s welfare. (What idiots, the debt can’t be paid anyway.)

“I am fundamentally opposed to policies that allow parents to abdicate their responsibilities, which, in turn, results in more families having to go on welfare,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a speech in June on the Senate floor. Obama’s new regulations, he said, “would undermine a key feature of welfare reform, which is that single mothers can avoid welfare if fathers comply with child-support orders.”

Frances Pardus-Abbadessa, head of child-support enforcement for New York City, said: “The complaint we often hear is, ‘Why should incarcerated fathers, of all people, be the ones to get a break from their obligations — and at a cost to the taxpayer?’ “

Administration officials and their supporters counter that billing fathers while they’re in prison does little but dig them deeper into debt.

“Billing poor fathers doesn’t help poor mothers and kids become less poor,” said Jacquelyn Boggess, a poverty expert with the Center for Family Policy and Practice.

“All it creates,” she said, “is a highly indebted individual.”

Debt piles up

For Earl Harris, the problem was keeping up. He had a job in prison, cleaning the kitchen, but it paid only $7.50 a month — well short of the $168 the state of Missouri was billing him.

“Didn’t they know I was in prison?” he asks. “Weren’t they the ones that put me in there?”

When he got out in 2001, the unpaid amount was listed on his credit report — and pursued by an agency with the power to garnish 65 percent of his wages, intercept his tax returns, freeze his bank account, suspend his driver’s license and, if he failed to pay, lock him up again. By then, his debt had surged to more than $10,000.

Harris entered barbering school but soon returned to drug dealing and was thrown back into prison for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, his child-support debt swelled to more than $25,000.

Incarceration currently deemed ‘voluntary’

Harris’s plight is not unusual. The Marshall Project interviewed nearly three dozen noncustodial parents in 10 states; they all left prison owing between $10,000 and $110,000 in child support. Mostly fathers who are disproportionately black and poor, these parents faced prosecution for not repaying the debt, even after their children were grown.

And what they were able to pay did not necessarily go to their children or the mother. The state often kept their money as repayment for welfare, child care or Medicaid benefits that had been provided to the family while the dad was locked up.

To address the issue, the Obama administration began drafting new rules about four years ago. As currently written, the rules would forbid state child-support agencies from classifying incarceration as “voluntary,” granting parents the legal right to a reduction in payments while they’re in prison, a right that does not exist in 14 states.

The rules would require agencies to inform incarcerated parents of this right and would encourage agencies to provide a reduction in payments automatically. And they would urge states to transfer all payments directly to custodial parents — mostly mothers — and their children.

The administration proposal would provide about $35 million over the next five years to modernize the child-support system and to provide job training, job placement, bus fare, and other services to fathers facing prosecution for nonpayment.

The rule “will make sure that arrears don’t accumulate endlessly while a parent is incarcerated,” said Vicki Turetsky, President Barack Obama’s commissioner of child-support enforcement. “Our goal is to collect, month by month, for kids. We can do that when parents are employed, not in debt.”

Hatch and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have introduced legislation to block the new rules, though neither lawmaker has pushed to advance the measure.

Ron Haskins, a child-support expert at the Brookings Institution, said he and other conservatives actually support parts of the new regulations. But they worry, he said, that the policy “could begin a long process of undermining the child-support concept, which they strongly believe in.”

The struggle after prison

Back in North St. Louis, Earl Harris, now 38, has put in his hours as an apprentice barber and is one written test away from getting his license. In the meantime, he is living in a halfway house and working at a factory across the river in Illinois, packaging Febreze canisters and Swiffer mops.

His hours are 4 p.m. to midnight, though he arrives an hour early to make sure he doesn’t lose his spot to another temp worker waiting outside the building in hopes of getting a shift. After work, he typically gets a cousin to drive him back to his dorm room, where he sleeps from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. before heading to his daily support group for fathers.

By 8 a.m. the dads are circled up, talking about having kids and debt. They have come because the program helps them find a job, develop strategies for handling their arrears and work on their parenting skills. They also get free legal help. Many of them were incarcerated, almost exclusively for selling drugs, and everyone is wearing a jacket and tie, the uniform of employment.

One father, Louis Moore, said his debt soared to almost $60,000 while he was inside. Allan Newcomer’s is more than $68,000. “Everybody in the penitentiaries was getting the letters,” Newcomer said.

Lisl Williams, a former judge who now works with the fathers, said even if they spend their money on food, clothes or toys for their children, it does not reduce their debt. In many cases, she said, the whole family — the mother, aunts, uncles, cousins — chips in to help pay it, and then the money they pay goes to the government as repayment for welfare they received long ago.

Because the fathers don’t have large incomes to garnish, bank accounts to tap or property to seize, she adds, they are more likely to face re-incarceration for not paying their arrears.

‘I know I’m the bad man’ (Oh, really?)

Another dad, Corey Mason, said he was incarcerated and already racking up child-support debt when he got a notice saying he might have another child by a different mother. He was instructed to go to the medical wing, get a DNA swab and send it to the agency. When they confirmed his paternity, he started getting a new set of child-support bills.

Mason sent several handwritten letters to the agency explaining that he was in prison. He said he never got a response. (So who is really bad? You know!)

Now that he’s out, Mason has a job at the Marriott hotel downtown. He works the graveyard shift, cleaning, shutting down the bar, providing towels to customers who ask for extra. Because the child-support agency garnishes well over half his weekly paycheck, he turned down a recent promotion.

“I want to grow in the company. But I don’t want to work that much harder if they’re just going to take all of it to pay for history,” Mason said.

“I know I’m the bad man. But I’m working harder now than I ever have, and it’s like this is designed to keep me behind, backed up against the wall, in debt for the rest of my life.” (Hear the defeat and fear? That’s what they want!)

Obama: ‘Too many fathers M.I.A, AWOL’

Obama has frequently scolded the same absentee fathers who now stand to benefit from his regulations. “Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” he told a Chicago audience in 2008 as a candidate for president.

Some fathers interviewed for this story had multiple children — one man said he had 12 — by different mothers. Many seemed less than eager to find employment. A few served time for domestic violence.

Some mothers say these men do not deserve to be freed of their debt.

“There’s a real tension here, as a matter of public policy,” said Joan Entmacher, an expert on family poverty at the National Women’s Law Center. “There are absolutely fathers who evade their responsibilities, saying, ‘Oh, I can’t pay that,’ and not even trying. We don’t want to simply reward that attitude.”

Even if a father is a deadbeat, however, the evidence is clear: Noncustodial fathers are far more likely to pay child support, and otherwise reengage with their families, if payments are manageable.

In a 2012 study by the Center for Policy Research, a private nonprofit research organization, fathers paid a much higher percentage of their monthly obligations when offered relief from unpayable state-owed debt. In studies in Maryland, Illinois and California, fewer than 15 percent remained noncompliant once the old debts were reduced and they were given a schedule of regular payments. And the fathers most likely to abide by “debt compromise” agreements were those who had been incarcerated.

Boggess, the child-support analyst, said that trying to collect the accumulated debt is “like squeezing an empty bottle and hoping something comes out.

“These fathers are poor, period. Their arrears are uncollectible, period,” she said. “They’ve never even met anyone who had $30,000.”

States taking action

Many states have already taken action. In 36 states and the District, incarceration is no longer officially considered “voluntary” impoverishment, and an imprisoned father is legally entitled to have his monthly child-support bill modified to as little as $50 a month or, in rare cases, stopped altogether.

But it is still up to the father to prove he is incarcerated, and then to file for the reduction. This involves navigating a maze of paperwork from prison, usually with no lawyer, irregular access to phones and, in many cases, an eighth- or ninth-grade education.

The most common pitfall, said Bo Twiggs, the director of UpNext, a program in New York City that helps recently incarcerated fathers, is that the incarcerated dad has no idea his child support is piling up because he isn’t getting the notices. The debt keeps compounding – and federal law prohibits the reduction of child-support bills retroactively.

“It’s hard for these fathers to understand that they can’t wait, they can’t adjust to life in prison before dealing with child support, that they need to take action immediately because the debt will be permanent,” Twiggs said. “That’s really counterintuitive.”

When these fathers get out of prison, they often don’t notice the debt until the state begins pursuing it, “which forces them to go underground instead of rejoining the formal economy,” said Turetsky, Obama’s commissioner of child-support enforcement.

Indeed, research shows that the two most important factors in a former prisoner’s successful reentry into the community are employment and positive relationships with family. Both of these are hindered by the aggressive pursuit of child-support arrears: Garnishing 65 percent of a father’s paycheck, so he is tempted to earn cash off the books; suspending his driver’s license so he can’t get to work; sending him bills that are so far beyond his capacity to pay that he keeps his distance from his family.

“I see it all the time,” Twiggs said: “Not reengaging with the family. Noncompliance with parole and child support. Under-the-table efforts at income. Self-defeat, high anxiety, general institutional distrust. All of that is triggered by this absolutely overwhelming, impossible feeling of debt.”

portions from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Jackpot Winnings” Go To Deadbeat States

by Moody Jim Rathbone

On an increasing basis, “news articles” are bragging about how the “jackpot earnings” of “deadbeat parents” are being forfeited to various states. The latest in braggarts is the not-so-humble state of Ohio, where jackpot winnings were claimed as credited toward 1,657 overdue child support cases statewide. This is the latest wrinkle as states attempt to “tar and feather” powerless “deadbeat parents.”

What these articles don’t say and what the states don’t want you to know is that the state corporations that collect these “debts” receive a substantial windfall from the federal government. In the case of recent Ohio collections, the state is claiming to have received $2 million dollars. What isn’t said is that these state corporations receive double that amount from the federal government, an amount that comes out of the pockets of US taxpayers and an unsustainable spending debt that the nation can ill afford. The nation is bilking many parents that cannot afford it, even when some choose to gamble what they have. The state corporations will take it any way they can get it, as they justify financial pickings through “law.” Never mind that the whole current child support scam is illegal and unconstitutional per the founding documents of the nation.

The bigger question is what these state corporations are doing with all that federal cash, since they are charging taxpayers for billboards, super websites that list collections from casinos in “real time,” and other collection efforts on the side as well. Life must be mighty sweet for these collection agencies that are taking cash in from all sides in the name of poor helpless children. What are they doing with the money? That is the question you should be asking of your local child support collection agent. These scumbags deserve to be tarred and feathered for their criminal, but legal, activity.

Battle Over Child Support – Republicans Not Your Friends

by Connor D. Wolf

House Republicans introduced a Bill Tuesday to stop the Obama Administration from Undermining Child Support

“Late last year, the administration released a far-reaching proposed rule that would overturn a number of bedrock principles of child support enforcement and welfare reform, among them that parents should be financially responsible for their children,” a press release from the House Ways and Means Committee stated. “The measure would stop the administration from finalizing or implementing any feature of the proposed rule, which would make unprecedented changes to current child support policies and laws.”

The bill was introduced by Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Rep. Charles Boustany along with Republican Senate leaders Orrin Hatch and John Cornyn.

“This bill is simple,” Ryan said in a statement. “It insists that the administration work with—not around—Congress to enact its child-support policy priorities.”

The measure hopes to counter a 2014 proposed rule change designed to make the Child Support Enforcement program better aligned with a 2011 executive order by the president. Republicans warn the rule change could make it easier for some people to avoid paying child support.

“Last year the administration issued a proposed rule that, if made final in its current form, would make it easier for non-custodial parents to evade paying child support,” Hatch noted. “A move that could potentially force some American families to go on welfare. Deadbeat parents, not hardworking taxpayers, should be held accountable for their financial responsibilities.”

However, in their Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services along with the Children and Families Administration argue the rule change will be beneficial.

“The NPRM proposes revisions to make Child Support Enforcement program operations and enforcement procedures more flexible, more effective, and more efficient by recognizing the strength of existing state enforcement programs, advancements in technology that can enable improved collection rates, and the move toward electronic communication and document management,” the agencies noted.

—

What does this say? Republicans, in general, are not for child support reform. They want things are they are – tough for non-custodial parents to exist – with policies that are punitive rather than constructive. They are for the continuing to violate privacy of the nation, violate civil rights, debunk due process and other unconstitutional features of US statute and policy. They are pretending to be fiscally responsible at your expense using a system that rewards corporate government exploitation at taxpayer expense. It’s all a lie and a sham. – MJR

Owe Money? You’re A Deadbeat

by Moody Jim Rathbone

these are the ‘good guys’

They want you shaking in your boots. If you owe child support in the United States, authority claims you are a “deadbeat.” People owe money for all kinds of debts, but that doesn’t make the person a deadbeat, nor are they called one. In fact, the current Administration wants you in debt to grow the economy, but most “deadbeat” parents with an average or less income don’t have any money to spend to support the dreams of the state. In fact, they don’t even have the mythology of the “American Dream” that American Presidents push like candy. They are too busy supporting the state and Federal government to prop up unconstitutional child support. It’s all about “justice” they say.

For example:

Early Wednesday morning, a group of Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies went around the county seeking “deadbeat” parents who have failed to appear in court for failing to pay child support. The nine parents taken into custody owe a total of $66,382.90 to nine children.

In fact, as far as these authorities are concerned, you owe them money. That is because according to Federal Law, you do owe the state. Child Support is federal debt per the Bradley Amendment for Social Security Administration. The Federal government pays the state corporations handsomely for collecting what debt they can, all backed and funded by federal taxpayer funds. It’s Constitutionally illegal, but justified by fed and state alike (as statute or policy) as they work together to pry money from “deadbeats” any way they can. The Feds may be financially bankrupt themselves, but you won’t have that privilege, if and when you decide to file bankruptcy. That is because President Bush signed eternal child support into law by modifying bankruptcy code. The state has all the rights. There is no way out in their eyes… you know, the death and taxes sort of thing. That is the sad path that this nation has taken – the path of exploitation, extortion and tyranny.

In this day, depending on the local authority around you, the sheriff is seeking to shame anyone that is behind on child support for any reason. They post your name, address and face on a billboard or online with your local newspaper. To authorities, your debt of child support is a public issue that is all your fault. The reality is entirely different. The state persecutes you because of corporate policy. You see, each court, each government department is a corporation that seeks to make money off of you. Many of them have decided that you will be cuffed and slapped in jail, with the expectation of coercing you to pay up your child support. The court doesn’t even need to be right. Much of the time, the ‘judge’ isn’t right – not even close.

Actually, these “family courts” are wrong 100% of the time. American ‘citizens’ are supposed to have Constitutional guarantees that preclude evil treatment by the authority of courts, family judges and those that take their orders from them. Due process has become fiction. Most attorneys are fearful of standing up for real justice. That justice certainly isn’t oppressing non-custodial parents, even if they are ‘guilty’ before the law (that means what they want it to mean). For that matter, human rights have become fiction too – even as the Feds point a finger of accusation at China or Russia. The Feds have made themselves the holy arbiter of ‘human rights,’ the church of morality. In the case of any court-ordered child support, your human right is for you to pay up and shut up. That is called tyranny.

Everyone is affected. Nobody is immune. They just think they are – immune that is. The only vaccination is to overthrow the tyranny.

Taxpayers Pay for Road Signs to Shame ‘Deadbeats’

by Moody Jim Rathbone

If you are a non-custodial parent, you’ve probably heard it before. When you find yourself behind in child support you are automatically labeled a deadbeat by certain authorities and those with an axe to grind. After all, they are ‘entitled’ to your cash any way they can get it.

Nationally, some ‘public officers’ have taken it on themselves to disgrace the public ‘deadbeats’ in their jurisdiction at your expense. In a new program, those in Northumberland County Pennsylvania are likely to find their faces on a billboards. The county may lease four billboards for $700 a year and post photos to shame those who owe the courts nearly $20 million in fines and child support. Commissioner Vinny Clausi loves the idea.

“I am 100 percent supporting this. These guys have been doing everything they can to collect this money. We have tried for years to get these people to pay, and I believe that the efforts between the cost collections team and the constant pressure the group is applying to the deadbeats who refuse to pay is something we need in this county.”

You remember who is paying for the signs, regardless of any perceived return on investment. The taxpayer is paying for the signs. Regardless of whether it comes from federal money or state money, they are pulling it from the tax base somewhere. This is because corporate government supposedly doesn’t make any money, even though this is a cultural lie. Corporate government is all about making money since virtually all government offices and courts are incorporated. They make money, even when they don’t. That is why they believe they can afford billboards with the intent of shaming local residents into submission.

Just remember, regardless of what Vinny and others in ‘public service’ say, taxpayer money is being used to fund the venture for a measure that is Constitutionally illegal. Due process has been vacated. No matter. Child support law is unconstitutional, but Federal family law statute has overcome that. Officials believe it is their God-given right to oppress those that owe them – publicly, and at your expense. This is also at the expense of your grandchildren as well, since the nation is running a budget deficit. That’s just good business. Right?

Technically, Vinny and his ilk are the deadbeats.

People with outstanding warrants can avoid arrest or jail for failure to pay child support if they surrender, court officials say in Pennsylvania. The amnesty program will not forgive outstanding child support, but will give parents a chance to make arrangements to pay what they owe.  Some amnesty. It’s illegal and lawful. How’s that for American jurisprudence?

Walter Scott and the Need for Child Support Reform

by Joy Moses

Walter Scott’s death was striking because a police officer fired eight shots at him while his back was turned. When something so tragic occurs, observers tend to wonder why. The officer’s actions and utter disrespect for human life can never be justified. But recently, the New York Times published new information about Scott’s split second decision to run — his child support case. According to his brother, “Every job he has had, he has gotten fired from because he went to jail because he was locked up for child support.”

Elements of Scott’s story reflect existing concerns about the child support system. A debate over potential large-scale reform is more than a decade overdue. The seeming impossibility of change has always loomed ominously large, overshadowing calls for reform and pushing them into the dark corners of the policy world. However, at this current political moment, there are national conversations about policing, bipartisan criminal justice reforms and an existing White House initiative focused on men and boys of color — concepts that would have seemed laughable just a few short years ago.

child support can make a man indigent

There are some fathers who absolutely refuse to care for their children and they should be held accountable. However, the current system reaches well beyond that group, creating negative consequences for men who are rarely credited with being caring parents and are simply too poor to pay. The political explosiveness of the “deadbeat dad,” a figure that some researchers say sprang out of the same sources as his female counterpart (the “welfare queen”), helped distort the foundations of child support policy. The system seems to partially rest on underlying beliefs that low-income men, and especially those who are black, avoid work and financially providing for their children at all costs while also being permanently childlike and in need of both discipline and lessons on how to behave.

Over the years, the program has effectively served many families (transferring funds from one parent to another) for which it should be applauded. However, policies built on a foundation of stereotypes about numerous men who don’t want jobs stand in stark contrast to the reality of numerous jobs that don’t want the men. Researchers like William Julius Wilson (More Than Just Race), have documented decades long trends of disappearing job opportunities for low-skilled workers as well as increased criminal justice involvement which further leads to employment discrimination.

When entities spend significant time on activities that fail to help and that actually hurt parents and families, it’s often useful to redirect their energies elsewhere. Reforms should shift the program mission and values away from damaging racial stereotypes that hurt families of all races and towards efforts to accurately diagnose the needs of families and take ‘pro-social’ action to address them.

One useful primary goal would be to comprehensively address the family law needs of low and middle-income families, helping with a very real challenge — the increasing and extraordinarily large number of families who can’t afford an attorney or who don’t feel comfortable representing themselves in legal matters. In doing so, agencies should assume that parents of all racial and class groupings share in a desire to care for their children, suggesting that they be treated with respect and provided with quality customer service. This would build upon efforts to accurately identify bad dads whose non-payment is rooted in an adamant refusal rather than their economic circumstances.

With such a vision, services would start to look much different. No longer treated as enemies of the state, low-income fathers would be less likely to literally and figuratively run away from child support. The sole focus wouldn’t be on a father’s monetary value but on improving father-family relationships. Court decisions and unaddressed legal needs would be replaced by model practices like mediation that support mothers and fathers in making their own decisions for their families. Punishments like imprisonment would be replaced by employment assistance. And other proposed reforms designed to guarantee child support for women and children would avoid potential incentives to hound men for unaffordable reimbursements of funds states pay out to women and children.

Some states have already experimented with such reforms, finding positive results that have included increased child support payments by fathers and greater parental satisfaction with agency services. The Obama Administration has encouraged states to adopt these best practices while proposing helpful new rules. However, there are limits to the changes that can occur without Congress overhauling currently existing state requirements and incentives.

We need a fruitful, progressive conversation that abandons a focus on the status quo and reform efforts that toy around existing edges — instead choosing a new vision for the future that endeavors to do the hard work of changing the culture and functioning of a system that means so much to so many.

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Of course, there is no mention in this article about U.N. Treaty or the Bradley Amendment, which prohibits child support arrears from being changed or removed – but the article does pretend to care (and is much kinder than I am). Meanwhile, the welfare queens still have control over America at great cost to all Americans. – MJR

The Child Support System Should Support Families, Not Government Coffers

Child support is considered an antipoverty program because it forces noncustodial parents to contribute financially to their children’s care.

But it also operates as a government cost-recovery strategy by reimbursing states and the federal government for benefits paid to mothers on behalf of children. As such, families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families only receive about a quarter of the child support collected on their behalf. The majority of states keep all child support collected on behalf of these families, and fewer than half allow even a small pass-through of the child support they collect — typically $50 — to go to the child.

Child support orders are also proportionately very high given many men’s low incomes — 70 percent of the national uncollected child support debt is owed by noncustodial parents who have no quarterly earnings or who have annual earnings of less than $10,000.

Some fathers pay up to 65 percent of their wages in child support and arrearages to the state. Such a high level of garnishment would severely strain almost any person’s budget, and drives many low-income men into severe poverty or the underground economy.

We now know that many low-income fathers want to contribute financially, but face barriers, including a lack of education and training, lack of employment and employment opportunities, race and class discrimination, criminal records and lack of credentials like a driver’s license, permanent address and previous work history.

Child support will never reach its full potential for providing income for our most vulnerable families without fundamental changes.

Child support payments should be passed through to the custodial parent in their entirety instead of being used to recoup government spending on children.

Payments should be set reasonably, with greater flexibility to adjust to the noncustodial parent’s income. Fathers can now request a review, but only if they know their rights and can navigate the judicial process, which the majority do not.

Fathers need to be armed with the training and skills to compete in this global economy so they can support themselves and pay child support. Training and employment supports can be either mandatory or voluntary, but they should be available.

Punitive methods to coerce a “deadbeat” dad into paying, like incarceration, should only be used in cases where fathers demonstrate that they have the means to pay, but are unwilling to fulfill their obligations, not when they are unable to. The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement itself has said that “the average incarcerated parent with a child support case has $10,000 in arrears when entering state prison, and leaves with $20,000 in arrears. Not only is this debt unlikely to ever be collected, but it adds to the barriers formerly incarcerated parents face in reentering their communities.”

Kenneth Braswell is the executive director of Fathers Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible fatherhood and mentoring.

What America’s Child Support Problem is Really About

by JJ Feinauer, Deseret News

How much does it cost the average parent to rear three children from birth to age 18? Upward of $750,000, according to this nifty CNN calculator.

But Anne Dias Griffin, ex-wife of the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, thinks the number lands closer to $1 million a month.

Griffin made headlines last month when she claimed that in order to keep up with the expenses of her three children, her ex-husband should be forced to pay a monthly six-figure sum in child support.

The Griffins’ legal battle has thrust the issue of unpaid alimony into the news once again, sold to readers with titillating headlines and expected outrage. Child support problems, from Janet Jackson to Dennis Rodman, make for perfect tabloid fodder. Spoiled celebrities, deadbeat millionaire dads and trust-fund children. That’s who doesn’t pay child support.

But FiveThirtyEight’s Mona Chalabi has shined a light on a far more complicated part of the narrative. Over $14 billion of child support funds went unpaid in America in 2011, according to Chalabi, and women are more likely to struggle with payments than men.

“In 2011, 32 percent of custodial fathers (meaning fathers who have legal custody of the children) didn’t receive any of the child support that had been awarded to them,” Mona wrote in her “Ask Mona” column on FiveThirtyEight. According to her analysis of the 2011 Census data, the number drops to 25.1 percent for custodial mothers.

Chalabi, who was understandably surprised by her finding, provided a few explanations as to why such a counterintuitive statistic might be true.

So many children, so many fathers.

First off, women with custody of their children are more likely than men to be living in poverty. These women are more likely to have part-time jobs, or no job at all. The implication here seems to be that men are slightly more likely to help their ex-wives out with child support because it’s more likely that women will desperately need the financial help.

There are other interesting elements that play into why child support might not get paid, such as racial differences (which are closely related to economic differences in her analysis); actual marital status (Chalabi points out that “custodial moms and dads who have never been married or are in their first marriages are much less likely to get any of the payments they’re due”); and prenuptial agreements.

All of these factors, however, speak mostly to the struggle of mothers — and fathers — in poverty, and how divorce or lack of marriage in the first place contributes to economic struggles. Chalabi’s analysis acts as a stark reminder that the issue of child support isn’t about celebrity tabloid disputes. Poverty and marriage trends are the real headlines.

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The state and the greed of so called custodial parents are at the center of this offensive media bloodlust. – MJR