Data Shows NJ Child Support Administrators Lied To Lawmakers About Effectiveness Of Collections

A law suit challenging New Jersey’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for child support arrears says that the Division of Family Development misled lawmakers to convince them that the program is a success.

The Department of Human Services, Division of Family Development (DFD) administers the child support computer system. In reports to the Legislature from 2006-08, the DFD said an average of $33 million in additional child support was collected annually under a program which provides for automatic suspensions of driver’s licenses. They said, on average, they collected of $1,737 per suspension.

However, changes to the child support computer system which allowed for more accurate tracking, show that from 2010 through 2014 the state averaged each year about 20,000 suspensions and collected only $5.3 million or an average of $259 per license suspension, according to reports obtained through discovery.

Rather than reconciling the 600% inflation of the numbers, annual reports on the progress of the license suspension program mysteriously stopped. From 2009 through 2013 no reports exist and in 2014 the drastically lower numbers were noted as due to a “change in data collection.”

The New Jersey Child Support Program Improvement Act, signed into law in 1998, requires annual reports to the Legislature about the program’s operation. [“Child Support: Is Losing Your License Legal?“, “Oppressive Government: Licenses & Child Support“]

In Kavadas v. Martinez, a law suit challenging the state’s practice of suspending driver’s licenses without conducting a hearing for nonpayment of child support, David Perry Davis, a New Jersey lawyer who represents the plaintiffs says the suspension of a driver’s license in such cases is “self-defeating” because it may prevent a parent from going to work, applying for jobs or seeing his or her children. [“American Poverty: An American Criminal Subclass“, “Unemployment, Child Support & Bradley Law“]

Davis also stresses the point that there is no way to determine what collections are attributable to license suspensions when they occur automatically upon the issuance of an arrest warrant. “Obviously, an arrested obligor’s interest is in getting out of jail – the idea that they are more motivated to do this because their license has been suspended is absurd,” Davis told the Bergen Dispatch.

In essence, the Division of Family Development claims that 100% of the money collected as a result of an arrest warrant is due solely to the automatic suspension of a driver’s license and arrests and incarceration have no impact on the money collected by the state.

“The suit does not seek to stop the suspension of driver’s licenses to force parties to pay child support, instead it attempts to limit the practice to cases where a hearing is conducted and a judge determines that it would be appropriate,” Davis said. The suit claims that the state’s practice of automatic suspensions is “unconstitutional and is contrary to the intent of the Legislature.”

“The 2014 Report still dramatically misrepresents the process, failing to inform the legislature that 99.429% of suspensions are done without a contemporaneous hearing,” Davis added.

Named as defendants in the suit are Raymond Martinez, chief administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission; the State of New Jersey; the Motor Vehicle Commission; acting Attorney General John Hoffman; and Natasha Johnson, director of the Office of Child Support Services in the state Department of Human Services.

The program stems from a 1996 federal law requiring states to toughen their child support procedures in order to qualify for certain types of federal aid. The federal Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) called for states to develop legislation to increase ways in which compliance with child support orders could be increased.

PRWORA also requires New Jersey residents receiving benefits under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to sign over any right to child support to their respective County. In those cases, monies collected through child support enforcement are used to reimburse the counties for TANF benefits and do not go directly to the families.

The 2014 report states, “Clearly the implementation of this program has positively impacted families that rely upon receiving support and, as an indirect benefit, has resulted in an additional revenue stream for the Motor Vehicle Commission.”

In order for a suspended license to be restored the Motor Vehicle Commission charges a $100 restoration fee.

In state fiscal year 2014 a total of 20,498 drivers’ licenses were suspended under the program, resulting in support collections of $4,333,543 or just $211 per suspension – plus $2,049,800 in additional fees to the MVC.

According to the Department of Human Services, Division of Family Development, on average, there are about 35,000 active child support warrants at any given time.

original article at Bergen Dispatch

Pregnant With Opportunity: Mom Still Wins

by Moody Jim Rathbone

In the mainstream media, you’ll read headings that titillate or that simply state “New Jersey Man Ordered to Pay Child Support for 1 Twin After DNA Test Shows 2 Dads.” The truth is that this kind of behavior is a national embarrassment! So potentially embarrassing that the lawsuit represents the plaintiff and defendant only as initials. The ‘mother’ should certainly be embarrassed. The details and headlines for child support continue to get stranger as time wears on. That is what happens in a nation without standards.

In a precedent-setting case, a Superior Court judge ruled that a man who was believed to have fathered twin girls actually only fathered one of them. It’s the sick stuff of legend and a new low for the ‘prostitutes’ of the nation. But this case isn’t a precedent for the reason you might think. It’s the first paternity case in New Jersey – and the third nationwide to showcase two different fathers for a single set of twins.

A man identified only as “A.S.” was off the hook for child support payments to one of the twins after DNA testing determined that he fathered one twin, but could not have been the father of the other.

The mother, identified only as “T.M.” gave birth to twin girls in January of 2013 and named “A.S.” as a romantic partner and the father of both kids when applying for public assistance. Of note is that she admitted that she had sex with another unidentified man ‘within a week’ of having had sex with “A.S.”  Obviously, the woman couldn’t keep her legs together and wisely, social services ordered a DNA test with the “surprising results.”

“A.S.,” obviously poverty stricken, represented himself in court, and has been charged to pay $28 a week in child support payments to his offspring. An academic study published in 1997 found that different fathers occurs in about one out of every 13,000 reported paternity cases involving twins. Either way, the “hoes” and judges of America still have the power. At least, the father hasn’t been taken to the cleaners if he hasn’t been late with the child support. “A.S” likely is late and the Bradley Amendment will apply. What a way to start the life of a child, or children, as the case is here. So now that you’ve heard all this, is the mainstream media telling you what you really need to know? Hardly! The lawsuit is just the beginning. Both parents, especially the father, will continue to experience all kinds of personal invasions and persecutions in the name of taking care of children. These mainstream articles don’t discuss the abuses that non-custodial parents face because of government policy that is nothing less than unconstitutional. Once the lawsuit dies down, good old dad will be without due process, completely at the mercy of government policy that has no mercy. Even worse, all Americans are paying dearly with their privacy and banking information so that big government can quickly snap up cash for kids.

For example, in United States statute, the Bradley Amendment (1986, Public law 99-509, 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9)(c)) requires state courts to prohibit retroactive reduction of child support obligations. Specifically, the amendment:

• automatically triggers a non-expiring lien whenever child support becomes past-due.
• overrides any state’s statute of limitations.
• disallows any judicial discretion, even from bankruptcy judges.
• requires that the payment amounts be maintained without regard for the physical capability of the person owing child support (the obligor) to promptly document changed circumstances or regard for his awareness of the need to make the notification.

NJ Lawsuit: No Automatic License Suspensions Over Child Support

A new class action lawsuit seeks to end the automatic suspensions of driver’s license held by parents in New Jersey who are behind on child support payments. The lawsuit seeks to limit when suspensions would be allowed.

The suit filed last Friday claims that such suspensions are unconstitutional, contrary to the “clearly expressed legislative intent” and “obviously counter-productive.” It was filed in state Superior Court by David Perry Davis, a Pennington-based attorney, and names four plaintiffs who have had their licenses suspended.

The attorney that filed the lawsuit called the license suspensions “absurdly self-defeating,” noting that policy and statute can block parents from going to work, applying for jobs, or seeing their children.” “It doesn’t make sense. The idea that automatically suspending someone’s driver’s license because he is in arrears will force him to pay child support is an example of a well-intentioned, but not well thought-out law.”

The suit wants judges only to suspend a delinquent payer’s license only as a last resort, not as required punishment. “Judges should have this as an option, but only if the facts of a case justify it.”

The suit names Raymond Martinez, chief administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, state Acting Attorney General John Jay Hoffman and Director of the New Jersey Division of Family Development as defendants. A hearing on a preliminary injunction should be held in the next 10 days.  In typical fashion, these ‘authorities’ refuse comment, noting they don’t publicly discuss ongoing litigation.

New Jersey is the only state in the country that imposes an immediate draconian penalty on motorists. According to Attorney Davis, most states suspend an average of 250 licenses annually, but nearly 20,500 licenses were suspended in New Jersey last year. Of the licenses in New Jersey, 99.5 percent of those licenses were suspended without a hearing being convened. That defies due process rights.