The Homeless Dads: The Bad Deal Divorce

John McElhenney still tries to see the balance in his divorce decree. But after losing everything twice, he’s convinced we men need to fight for equal consideration after the marriage has ended.

The typical divorce is actually pretty painful. The standard DEAL is almost an assault to fatherhood, and we need to fight to change it. In the most common arrangement, Mom gets the kids and house, dad gets the child support payment. It’s how things used to work. But today, unfortunately, the courts still go by this structure unless there is significant fight to something difference.

There are a few problems with this pattern.

The non-custodial parent is assumed to be a deadbeat when they are calling the AG’s office. You are segmented into custodial or non-custodial parent at the beginning. If you are the non-custodial parent the only reason you’d be calling is you are behind on your child support.

When we complain about unavailable dads, or dads that check-out after divorce, here are a few of the reasons why.

1. The child support burden is a lot of money.
2. Dads might be resentful of the “money only” role they are being put in.
3. When dad is asked to leave the marital home they are often forced to move in with family members or friends, this is largely because of the cost of child support.
4. In addition to $500+ per kid in child support (estimate) the dad is also asked to pay for health insurance. (Today, in my case this is an additional $1,200 per month with two kids.

So let’s see, I’ve got no home. I’m paying $1,200 a month for child support and $1,200 a month for health care. How can I afford an apartment? If I don’t have a killer job ($2,400 after tax expenses before I get a dollar for myself or my survival. Well, that’s a pretty steep hill to climb.

IF the playing field were equal, I would guess a lot more divorces would be negotiated in good faith. Today, even if you declare a collaborative divorce, the issue of money is liable to strike the dad in the pocketbook in a way the mom, to start out with, does not even have to consider. RARE is the case where the dad is given full custody and the mom pays child support.

Shouldn’t we start with 50/50 in both financial responsibility AND parenting time? This is the fight we are fighting in the courts today. I’m considering going back to court to reset the arrangement. I was attempting a collaborative divorce, but in the end I was handed this lopsided deal. I have to earn over $3,000 per month (taking taxes out BEFORE I pay the mom) before I have a chance at even putting food on the table.

This leaves a lot of dads as deadbeats, not because they are actually trying to shirk their responsibility, but because the mom and the court have saddled them up with so much financial liability that they cannot afford to make the payments each month. At that point the dad is subject to financial liens, foreclosure, and checking account freezes.

You know what happens when the AG’s office freezes your account?

1. The bank charges you $57 – $150 for the freeze.
2. The bank processes no further payments (rent, car payments, even your child support payments)
3. You bounce checks.
4. You’re credit get’s screwed.
5. You end up with an additional $200 – $400 in fees.

And you know what the AG’s officer will tell you? (The Humans Of Divorce, Dear AG’s Office Special Cases Officer Mr. McK!)

Fair treatment of fathers begins at the beginning of the relationship. BEFORE you have kids, you can agree to parent 50/50. If that’s the deal, you should have the discussion about if things don’t work out. (I’m not talking prenuptial, just an understanding) In my marriage we started out 50/50, but as soon as she decided she wanted a divorce (yes, it was her idea) the arrangement went to the cutting floor and I was handed the dad deal. A bad deal for everyone.

As the dad can’t afford a nice place for the kids to come visit, they want to come visit less. As mom’s house maintains some of its status and comfort (important for the kids) the dad is left in the cold to fend for himself AFTER he makes all the payments to help the mom stay in the house and live within the lifestyle the couple achieved TOGETHER. Except now it’s not together. And the cooperation you started with before you had kids, becomes a longterm ground war between “the money you owe me” and the money you can afford to pay without suing your ex.

Dad’s are just as important as moms. Even with young kids, the loss of either parent (my dad left when I was 5) is on of the most painful aspects of divorce. For the dad it is doubly devastating: the no longer have a house, and the courts and the AG’s office have now put their credit at risk, making employment and ability to pay even more difficult.

Consider the dads. If you’re a dad consider the courts and get an attorney who can show  you examples of winning in court for fair arrangements.

The money after divorce should be divided equally. Anything else puts man men at risk for debit issues, credit issues, and put them at risk of suicide and depression. Let’s put the balance back in divorce. Give both parents the benefit of the doubt. And both parents should be advocating for a 50/50 split in the same spirit they entered parenthood, with expectations of a 50/50 partnership. That partnership doesn’t end at divorce. But if we load up the man with all of the financial obligations and punish him for being late on a payment or two, we are hurting all the members of the family. The mom loses when the dad’s account is frozen. Even if the mom didn’t want it to happen. Once you’ve asked the AG’s office into your divorce, they never leave. (Inviting the Dinosaur Into Your Divorce)

We need fair divorce laws. We need courts that will listen to the needs of both parents and consider 50/50 parenting as the desired outcome. Until we stand up and fight for equality AFTER marriage we will continue to be on the losing side of the post-marriage equation.

original article

How America’s Child Support System Failed To Keep Up With The Times

When the U.S. child support collection system was set up in 1975 under President Gerald Ford — a child of divorce whose father failed to pay court-ordered child support — the country, and the typical family, looked very different from today.

And as the nation’s social, economic and demographic landscape has shifted, the system has struggled to keep up. Cynthia Osborne, director of the Child and Family Research Partnership and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, explains how these changes have outpaced the decades-old system — and left the country with more than $113 billion in unpaid child support.

Walk us through what the child support collection system looked like in 1975. What issues was it designed to address? What did the typical family look like?

It was officially launched in 1975, which is when the government established Section IV-D of the Social Security Act. No-fault divorce had recently been passed, and there was a rapid increase in divorce.

In 1975, this system would try to ensure that after a divorce, we would try to replicate what the household looked like prior to the divorce with regards to the children’s well-being. So the father would continue to provide income to the child, and the mother normally would get the child following a divorce in terms of physical custody, and she would use the resources from the father.

The whole system was set up in a way to try to bring back what the nuclear family looked like prior to a divorce, and nearly everyone who entered into the child support system was a product of divorce. There were very few nonmarital births at that time.

During that time period, divorce was one of the single greatest predictors that a woman, especially a woman with children, would fall into poverty. The research indicated that fathers typically gained financially following a divorce, even though they were ordered to pay child support, and mothers typically lost financially, they had both the children and reduced income. And so the child support system was hoping to try to offset some of that.

The 1970s and ’80s saw profound social, economic and demographic changes. What sort of shifts were occurring, and how did they affect child support?

There was this huge increase in divorce, and a beginning rise in nonmarital childbearing that was nearly nonexistent in the early 1970s — then becoming, by the mid-1980s, up into the 20 percent of all children.

Those were big changes that were occurring in the family, and simultaneously there were gains and losses in the labor market. There were more and more women who were starting to enter into the labor market during both the 1970s and ’80s. And the question about what women’s role was, vis-a-vis caring for their child and working and so forth, was starting to be really front and center in the discussion of women’s place within the family and the economy.

Still, though, the majority of women, when they became mothers, were the primary caretakers and not the primary breadwinners. The single mothers also were not very likely to work. So married moms were staying at home to take care of the kid. Single moms were on welfare, and our welfare rolls were expanding quite rapidly.

The 1980s [also] saw a huge boom in the return to college education, and this is especially true for men. And those who got this education— with higher skills and higher-wage jobs — were starting to really pull away from men who had lower levels of education or moderate levels of education. And men at the very bottom, who had no high school education especially, were starting to lose in real terms of their value of earnings. And that’s really a trend that’s continued until today.

And when we think about who those men are partnered with, often they’re partnered with the same women who are more and more likely to be dependent on welfare rolls — during this time there was a huge increase in welfare rolls — and also mostly among less educated women.

So you now had a growing number of women who were either divorced or not married who were seeking public assistance, and a growing number of less educated men who had very few prospects in the labor market, and declining prospects at that.

It really can’t be overstated how important in the whole welfare reform debate [it] was that one of the fastest entrants into the labor market were women with children under the ages of 5. And it became harder and harder to justify that we should have a system that would support one group of women to stay at home with their children while this other group of women was choosing to enter into the labor market.

And all this set the stage for welfare reform?

Yes, with that kind of backdrop — with two earners becoming necessary, women making this conscious decision to enter into the labor market and the general dismay about the existing welfare reforms system — we started really to think seriously about how we should do this differently, and what should we expect of moms and so forth, and I think that’s why the work requirements became so steep in the welfare reform debate.

And with child support, by the mid-1990s when all of these reforms were being put into place, nonmarital childbearing had risen from being something that was not very pervasive to nearly one-third of all births, 25 to 28 percent. Now, it’s at 41 to 42 percent.

What were the hallmarks of the 1996 welfare reform?

Welfare reform really did punctuate this idea that fathers should be responsible for providing for their children, that the state will do it in limited circumstances, but that we want the fathers to be the ones who are responsible for this. And there was a very strong notion at that point that men who weren’t paying for their child support were not involved in their children’s lives, were just deadbeat and avoiding the system.

The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) made it so that the guidelines had to be more specific, and that the states had to enforce them more carefully. It changed what the performance measures were for states — basically, if you set an order, you have to collect on it and there could be penalties if you didn’t. And it really punctuated the idea that child support is a direct link with welfare, that there really isn’t a way for a mom who’s going to go on public assistance to avoid seeking child support.

In 1994 our rolls on welfare were some of the largest that they had been; they had really ballooned up to the point where upwards of 7 percent of kids were on welfare rolls. There was no end in sight because of the increase in nonmarital childbearing and who was now coming into the system was a different family type than what the system was initially set up to accommodate. And that, I think, remains one of the biggest challenges of our system.

And so the initial system was set up to replicate the nuclear family of dad as breadwinner, mom as homemaker, and now you have families in which mom and dad may have never lived together. They may have lived together when the child was born for a short period of time. They may or may not have shared resources. The father may have been contributing or not contributing.

And that gets us to the massive amount of unpaid child support — $113 billion and counting.

Right. Each state does it differently, but Texas will determine what a noncustodial parent’s income is. If he says zero, well, there isn’t zero child support, there will often be a presumption that he should be working full time, full year at at least minimum wage. So the judge will often set what’s called a minimum wage order, and it’s about $215 a month in Texas, which is about 20 percent of your net income of that. So here is a father who is now going to owe $215 a month plus about $50 a month in medical support. And he did not disclose that he had any income at the time that he established those awards.

It could be even worse, it could be — and this happens very often — that that man comes in, but his child is 2 years old. And now, either he’s been evading for two years, or he didn’t know he had this child, or they were together for almost all that time, but now they’ve separated. There could be lots of different reasons, but the child’s now 2 years old. The judge could order at that time that not only does he owe $200 each month moving forward, but he owes $200 a month for those two years …

Even if they were together but not married?

That’s right. And so this back child support is something that’s very real. A lot of the men start off in this hole that they just simply cannot dig themselves out of. For some of these guys, having a $5,000 arrears payment, it would be like a middle income person having a $50,000 debt that they’re just supposed to somehow work their way out of. It feels almost impossible.

What about the people who argue that this just doesn’t make sense?

I think it is actually not a simple answer. We do need to feel like men are being held accountable for their children, or noncustodial parents are supporting their children in some way. I do think that it’s reasonable for people to say somehow men have to demonstrate that they are going to provide for their children. Even if it is $200 a month and even if they don’t have a job, we are going to hold them accountable.

That just ignores, though, the fact that we can say that, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be able to pay it. We often know that if they’re not able to pay their child support formally, that they’re less likely to be able to contribute informally. They’re going to stay away from the child; they’re going to be less involved.

So although it makes sense on some level that we want to find a way to hold these dads accountable, in fact, what we’re doing is making it less likely that he’s going to be engaged in his child’s life by providing informally or being involved in other sorts of ways, and it’s going to cause difficulties in the co-parenting relationship between the mom and the father.

And for those reasons, there are proposals by the Obama administration — and other folks have been advocating this for quite a while — that say, let’s set what we call right-sized orders, that we actually take into account what he actually has the ability to pay when we establish these child support orders, and that we’re hoping that if he pays $25 a month now, that we can modify that order later when he gets more income and he’ll pay a little more and so forth.

This applies also to fathers who are incarcerated. We have a huge number of fathers who are incarcerated at some point in their child’s life. But it has not been a material reason to alter your child support award amount. So that’s another change proposed by the Obama administration, that if you are incarcerated, that we modify the child support order in some way to reflect that you cannot earn an income during that time.

In Texas, the average arrears payment that a father owes who’s been incarcerated coming out of prison is $8,000. When he comes out with high levels of arrears, he’s less likely to enter into the formal labor market and have his wages immediately garnished, so it just sends him back to the underground economy and the chances of recidivism and incarceration are really high.

Ultimately, then, what’s the purpose of child support system?

The states’ incentives really are to set amounts that can be collected on that make it look like they are reaching collection goals. But the performance measures at the federal level are based on the proportion that you collect based on the proportion that’s established.

So the states could benefit if they move to this more right-sized orders approach. But we have to be careful that that big dollar amount out there of what we’re collecting doesn’t become the driving force of how to maintain our child support enforcement system.

To be perfectly honest, I think if I could be queen for the day, in today’s families, I would change the presumption that there is an equal division of time and an equal division of responsibility for providing for that child. That’s not going to work for every family. Some of them have never been contributing, some have both been contributing but at disproportionate amounts.

But if we started with the 50-50 presumption, then the judge could work with the families to say, well, how do we get to some form of equality that works for you guys?

If we really started with this presumption that we’re going to jointly care for our children, even though the parents are not married to each other, and then let’s work out a system that seems fair in both the amount of time that we’re spending and the amount of resources that we’re spending, that it costs to raise this particular child, it’s a lot more work on the part of the state to figure out what that is, but it just feels like that would be more fair.

For our low-income guys who can’t afford anything, the moms are having to work, why don’t they provide the child care? We’re not ready to go that way with our families, but our families have changed so much, we need a system that starts to keep up with them some way.

from NPR

Child Support Tyrants Want You Sick or Dead

As you’re reading this, consider the tyranny of the current child support regime in the United States and other modernized countries. Of course, these tyrants are also trying to finger you as they seek to take away any presumption of civil rights and any due process that a human being should have. That is the world we are living in. Only you can begin to change it, by banding together…

By Dr. Mercola

Anxiety over a project at work… a marital spat… financial trouble… health problems… the list of potential stressors is endless, but wherever your stress is coming from, it likely starts in your head.

An inkling of worry might soon grow into an avalanche of anxiety. It might keep you up at night, your mind racing with potential “what ifs” and worst-case scenarios. Worse still, if the problem is ongoing, your stressed-out state may become your new normal — extra stress hormones, inflammation, and all.

While beneficial if you’re actually in imminent danger, that heightened state of stress – the one that makes your survival more likely in the event of an attack, for instance – is damaging over time.

The thoughts in your head are only the beginning or, perhaps more aptly, are the wheels that set the harmful mechanism known as chronic stress into motion – and, once spinning, it’s very easy to spiral out of control. As reported in Science News:

“Stress research gained traction with a master stroke of health science called the Whitehall Study, in which British researchers showed that stressed workers were suffering ill effects.

Scientists have since described how a stressed brain triggers rampant hormone release, which leads to imbalanced immunity and long-term physical wear and tear. Those effects take a toll quite apart from the anxiety and other psychological challenges that stressed individuals
deal with day to day.”

Stress: It’s Not Just in Your Head

You know the saying “when it rains, it pours”? This is a good description of chronic stress in your body, because it makes virtually everything harder. The term psychological stress is, in fact, misleading, because no stress is solely psychological… it’s not all in your head.

Let’s say you lose your job or are struggling from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from abuse you suffered as a child. Excess stress hormones are released, including cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. Your stress response becomes imbalanced; it’s not shutting off.

Your immune system suffers as a result, and epigenetic changes are rapidly occurring. The stress is triggering systemic low-grade inflammation, and suddenly your blood pressure is up, your asthma is flaring, and you keep getting colds.

That cut on your leg just doesn’t seem to want to heal, and your skin is a mess. You’re having trouble sleeping and, on an emotional level, you feel like you’re nearing burnout.

Stress is very much like a snowball rolling down a mountain, gaining momentum, gaining speed and growing until suddenly it crashes. That crash, unfortunately, is often at the expense of your health.

Stress Increases Heart Attack Risk by 21-Fold

Police officers clearly face amplified stress on the job, and researchers found they were 21 times more likely to die of a heart attack during an altercation than during routine activities. This isn’t entirely surprising until you compare it to heart-attack risk during physical training, which increased only seven fold.

The difference in physical exertion between the two circumstances likely doesn’t account for the increased risk… it’s the level of stress being experienced that sends heart attack risk through the roof.

More heart attacks and other cardiovascular events also occur on Mondays than any other day of the week. This “Monday cardiac phenomenon” has been recognized for some time, and has long been believed to be related to work stress.

During moments of high stress, your body releases hormones such as norepinephrine, which the researchers believe can cause the dispersal of bacterial biofilms from the walls of your arteries. This dispersal can allow plaque deposits to suddenly break loose, thereby triggering a heart attack.

Stress contributes to heart disease in other ways as well. Besides norepinephrine, your body also releases other stress hormones that prepare your body to either fight or flee. One such stress hormone is cortisol.

When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes increasingly desensitized to cortisol, and since inflammation is partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get out of control. Chronic inflammation is a hallmark not only of heart disease but many chronic diseases.

Stress Linked to Diabetes & a Dozen Other Serious Consequences

People who grow up in poor socioeconomic conditions have higher levels of inflammatory markers, including interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). They’re also twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes as adults, a risk researchers say is partly due to the elevated inflammation.

People who suffered child abuse also tend to have higher levels of chronic inflammation, as do those who act as caregivers for loved ones. As reported in Science News:

“Scientists are now digging deeper, sorting through changes in gene activity that underlie inflammation and receptor shutdown. For example, childhood stress might get embedded in immune cells called macrophages through epigenetic changes — alterations that affect the activity levels of genes without changing the underlying
DNA.

Psychologist Gregory Miller of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., suggests that these changes can endow the macrophages with pro-inflammatory tendencies that later foster chronic diseases.”

Prolonged stress can also damage your brain cells and make you lose the capacity to remember things. The brain cells of stressed rats are dramatically smaller, especially in the area of their hippocampus, which is the seat of learning and memory.

Stress disrupts your neuroendocrine and immune systems and appears to trigger a degenerative process in your brain that can result in Alzheimer’s disease. Stress-induced weight gain is also real and typically involves an increase in belly fat, which is the most dangerous fat for your body to accumulate, and increases your cardiovascular risk.

Stress alters the way fat is deposited because of the specific hormones and other chemicals your body produces when you’re stressed. Stress clearly affects virtually your whole body, but according to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky in the documentary Stress: Portrait of a Killer, the following are the most common health conditions that are
caused by or worsened by stress:

Cardiovascular disease
Hypertension
Depression
Anxiety
Sexual Dysfunction
Infertility and Irregular Cycles
Frequent Colds
Insomnia and Fatigue
Trouble Concentrating
Memory Loss
Appetite Changes
Digestive Problems

Stress Can Cause Stomach Disorders

Digestive problems made Dr. Sapolsky’s list above, which makes sense because the stress response causes a number of detrimental events in your gut, including:

Decreased nutrient absorption

Decreased oxygenation to your gut

As much as four times less blood flow to your digestive system, which leads to decreased metabolism

Decreased enzymatic output in your gut – as much as 20,000-fold!
To put it simply, chronic stress (and other negative emotions like anger, anxiety and sadness) can trigger symptoms and full-blown disease in your gut.

As Harvard researchers explain:

“Psychology combines with physical factors to cause pain and other bowel symptoms. Psychosocial factors influence the actual physiology of the gut, as well as symptoms. In other words, stress (or depression or other psychological factors) can affect movement and contractions of the GI tract, cause inflammation, or make you more susceptible to infection. In addition, research suggests that some people with functional GI disorders perceive pain more acutely than other people do because their brains do not properly regulate pain signals from the GI tract. Stress can make the existing pain seem even worse.”

Interestingly, the connection works both ways, meaning that while stress can cause gut problems, gut problems can also wreak havoc on your emotions. The Harvard researchers continue:

“This connection goes both ways. A troubled intestine can send signals to the brain, just as a troubled brain can send signals to the gut. Therefore, a person’s stomach or intestinal distress can be the cause or the product of anxiety, stress, or depression. That’s because the brain and the gastrointestinal (GI) system are intimately connected — so intimately that they should be viewed as one system.”

Stress Changes Immune Response and Cell Behavior

Stress is implicated in cancer, not so much as a cause of cancer but because it seems to fuel its growth (or interfere with processes that might otherwise slow it down). For instance, the stress hormones norepinephrine and epinephrine encourage the growth of blood vessels that help prostate tumors to grow. Meanwhile, in women with pelvic growths (who were awaiting tests to see if the growths were cancerous or benign), those with good social support (and presumably therefore less stress) had more immune attack cells directed at the masses, Science News reported.

Stress has also been shown to increase the likelihood of cancer spreading, or metastasis, which is a major cause of cancer death, by 30-fold. Chronic stress also leads to disrupted cortisol signaling. In the case of excess cortisol exposure, some cell receptors become muted, including receptors on immune cells. This is one reason why people under stress are about twice as likely to develop a cold after exposure to a cold virus, compared to non-stressed people.

Factors That Make Stress Worse

Dr. Sapolsky explains that you are more vulnerable to stress if the following factors are true:

You feel like you have no control

You’re not getting any predictive information
(how bad the challenge is going to be, how long it will go on, etc.)

You feel you have no way out

You interpret things as getting worse

You have no “shoulder to cry on”
(e.g., lack of social affiliation or support)

People at the top of the social pyramid feel a greater sense of control because they are the ones who call the shots, as well as typically having more social connections and resources at their disposal. This results in less stress, which over the long run translates to lower rates of disease. Stress is also closely related to the experience of pleasure, related to the binding of dopamine to pleasure receptors in your brain. People of lower socioeconomic status appear to derive less pleasure from their lives. Perhaps this is why laughter therapy is so effective at relieving stress.

On the brighter side, positive emotions like happiness, hope, and optimism also prompt changes in your body’s cells, even triggering the release of feel-good brain chemicals. While you can create happiness artificially (and temporarily) by taking drugs or drinking alcohol, for instance, the same endorphin and dopamine high can be achieved via healthy habits like exercise, laughter, hugging and kissing, sex, or bonding with your child. If you’re wondering just how powerful and effective this can be, a 10-second hug a day can lead to biochemical and physiological reactions in your body

Lower Heart Disease Risk
Stress Reduction
Fight Fatigue
Boost Immune System
Fight Infections
Ease Depression

———

Are you getting the point? Tyrants are shortening your life.

How the US Legal System Screws Poor Parents

A system full of flawed logic that winds up hurting children more than it helps them.

by Wendy Paris

Walter Scott wasn’t just a black man in America shot by a police officer; he also was a divorced father. While debate rages about excessive use of police force, his death points to another troubling practice—the incarceration of poor parents for failing to pay child-support.

For the most part, these are not “deadbeat dads”; they’re dead broke dads. Seventy percent of unpaid child support debt is owed by parents with no or low reported earnings, according to the Office of Child Support Enforcement. Their ex-wives often are poor, too. For these families, our punitive child support policies function like a de facto debtor’s prison for fathers. This, at a time when divorce, more broadly, has dramatically improved for many. While family scholars and journalists voice concern about a growing “marriage divide”—the way that marriage has become almost a luxury good attained by the “haves” and eschewed or effectively denied to the poor—a similar sorting is happening with divorce and co-parenting.

On the one hand, celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow seek conscious uncouplings. Upper- and middle-class couples seeking divorce in the US benefit from ever-increasing psychological, financial, and parenting resources. The law itself has improved divorce for many. New legal approaches such as mediation and collaborative counsel can make filing itself a mutually uplifting experience. These forms of “alternative dispute resolution” help adults make good decisions for everyone in the family, and steer clear of the divisive, anger-escalating spectacle of family court. Divorce can be seen as another awkward life passage, one that generates laughs, as on Bravo network’s new show The Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce.

But if a family finds itself in court, the system seems stacked against the poor. “Many states have two systems, one for married parents and one for poor people/welfare cases that are funneled through ‘paternity dockets’ where they barely get to say a word,” says Daniel Hatcher, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore and a prolific researcher of and advocate for child support reform. “It’s a tribunal that’s just about child-support and paternity. It’s crowded. Judges are jaded. They face huge case loads.” As the trend toward unmarried parenting continues, especially among the poor, these paternity dockets look to grow even more crowded, meting out rushed decisions to more families.

While in court, a non-custodial parent, usually the father, may have a chance to explain to a busy judge his financial situation—perhaps he’s unemployed and worried about falling behind on rent. In many states, the judge can decide that this father could be earning minimum wage, impute that income to him, and set a custody amount he must pay the mother of his child as a percentage of his potential (that is to say, fictitious) earnings.

Maybe this obligation pushes him to scramble for a job. Perhaps it takes a few months. All the while, the child support debt has been accumulating. Now he has the monthly obligation plus back payment. (This is where the Bradley Amendment kicks in.) Some states terminate parental rights or throw a parent in jail or prison for back child support, or “non-compliance” with court orders. In South Carolina, the court can order the noncompliant father to appear to explain his delinquency, charge him $1,500 in the process, and jail him for up to a year. South Carolina is hardly an outlier. In Texas, a parent can be incarcerated even after he’s paid back his child support debt. (Texas is infamous for overcrowded courts, too. In one court in Harris County, Texas, a court master decided 500 paternity and child support cases in one day.)

Now the father is in jail; for some, like Scott, incarceration means the end of that great (or not so great) job. While in jail or prison, child support debt continues to mount in many states, some of which consider incarceration “voluntary unemployment.” In some states, you can apply for a child support modification while behind bars, but many parents do not know about this option, may find the process confusing, and may not realize their child support debt continues. Studies from a few states show that on average, a parent with a child support case enters jail or prison about $10,000 behind; he leaves owning more like $30,000. This debt is unlikely ever to be paid. The national child-support debt is more than $115 billion.

In South Carolina, if the non-custodial parent accumulates $500 in back child support while unemployed, the state can suspend or revoke his driver’s license as punishment. Say our unemployed father is a truck driver. Without his license, he’s lost his ability to work, and probably his sense of autonomy as an adult, and his willingness to cooperate with a system that’s working against him. As Scott’s brother Rodney told the New York Times, “Every job he has had, he has gotten fired from because he went to jail because he was locked up for child support. He got to the point where he felt like it defeated the purpose.”

Incarceration also prevents a parent from spending time with his children. Research from a variety of areas shows that when the non-custodial parent spends time with his children, he’s more likely to pay child support. Forty years of research on child development shows that children benefit from having a good relationship with both parents, or parent-type figures. Incarceration yanks a parent right out of a child’s life.

If a custodial parent—usually the mother—seeks Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF, the program that replaced welfare) or food stamps, both parents are treated like bad children. The mother is required to name the father, establish paternity, and sue the father in court for support, even if they have an in-kind arrangement that’s working. The pursuit of child support can destroy relationships. The money, if he has it, often goes back to the state for supporting the brood, not to his children. Meanwhile, the dads who can’t pay may find themselves in jail or prison, unable to help mom in other ways, such as picking up the kids from school or throwing a ball around on weekends.

The logic flaw baffles the mind, and hurts the heart, especially since about half of the nation’s back child support is owed to the government. In many states, child support collected in the name of the custodial parent receiving government aid does not go to that parent. It goes to the government instead, to pay for the cost of the food stamps of TANF. “The idea is that if we’re supporting this mom, we should be able to go after the dad to recoup this cost,” says Hatcher. “The guidelines don’t really work for these welfare cases at all. Most policy is driven by discussion about cases where both parents are working, middle class families on up; you plug in both parents’ income and then transfer to the custodial parent. That doesn’t make any sense when the money goes to the government.”

How have we arrived at these anti-family policies?

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the notion of the “deadbeat dad” loomed large in the public conscious, in part because of one spectacularly flawed and widely-cited study—since retracted by its own author—that purported to show divorced mothers subsisting at a third of their former standard of living, while the fathers lived better than ever. For many custodial parents, child support is the road out of poverty. Much child support went uncollected, and enforcement policies were changed to improve the situation. Some policies worked; the Office of Child Support Enforcement today still publishes reports showing continued gains in money collected. Threat of jail was considered a good motivator for delinquent dads, and it may be in some cases.

When it comes to the poor, however, these policies can create more harm than good. Maybe some fathers refuse to pay out of spite, while some mothers actively want their children’s father behind bars, if he’s violent, for example. But as research from a variety of areas shows, most of these poor families are fragile relationships, perhaps begun while very young, both people harboring hope for a future of stability and cooperation, even reconciliation or romance.

Old ideology probably contributes to our current policies as well—a view of faltering families that’s about as enlightened as something out of The Scarlet Letter. In England, Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1601 authorized towns to sue fathers of unwed mothers to reimburse them for assistance provided to their children. Early “bastardy acts” allowed colonies to incarcerate pregnant unwed mothers to protect the state from the financial burden of the child. Today’s laws are not as different as you’d expect. Lurking underneath lies an entrenched view that fathers are the lazy enemies of their own families, and poor mothers, in some way brought this on themselves. (You see this kind of view in the comments section of a recent piece in Concurring Opinions by law professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone on the child support link in the Walter Scott affair.)

Some of the resources benefitting middle and upper-class divorcing couples help the poor, too. Technology, for example, allows those across the economic spectrum to read about their state’s laws online and access forms without shelling out for a lawyer. Courthouses around the country now have staffed self-help centers to guide pro se litigants (a.k.a. the do-it-yourself divorcees) through the paperwork. Increasingly, lawyers offer “unbundled” services, a consultation on an hourly basis. Most states have parenting classes and workshops for divorcing parents. Surveys show, and casual conversation confirms, wide satisfaction with these workshops.

But unmarried parents as a group get fewer resources, and if one parent sues the other in court, the kind of Orwellian child support laws that dogged Walter Scott kick in across the states. The overarching principle is the best interest of the child (a legal myth), but this aim gets subverted in policies that hurt the whole family.

There are solutions, the most promising of which take a problem-solving, rather than punitive approach. In Virginia, child support enforcement workers have begun reaching out to employers to find work for non-compliers, rather than more jail time. The state also has retooled its child support guidelines and begun launching programs aimed at helping poor fathers improve job-hunting and parenting skills. Some states have experimented with assessing child support only if a non-custodial parent has a minimum reserve of income. States, including California and Ohio, have passed statutes requiring the exercise of discretion rather than automatically referring certain child welfare cases to child support enforcement services.

In Maryland, Hatcher has worked on legislation to allow the state to automatically disable child support arrears during incarceration. This reform passed, but is not widely enforced. Hatcher notes that one stumbling block to reform is poor communication between child support enforcement and the criminal justice system.

This problem of poor communication—long the dominion of marriage counselors—is one I’ve seen repeatedly in my own research on divorce. I’d assumed that bad divorces result from a dearth of good ideas, but found instead that there are creative, humane solutions coming from a variety of states and various disciplines— and abysmal communication of them. In divorce, as in marriage, good communication may be the best way to suture a gap.

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.

9 Members of Idaho Legislature Block International Child Support Treaty

by Moody Jim Rathbone

An international agreement to make it easier to enforce child support orders throughout the world is in danger of not being ratified in the United States because of nine lawmakers in Idaho. And what is wrong with that?

Nine members of the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee balked at sending legislation endorsing the agreement to the House for consideration. Without Idaho, the treaty will be dead in the U.S. because all 50 states must approve it. Idaho does not take tyranny lightly.

The Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance has been approved by 32 countries and 19 U.S. states so far. Idaho is taking a step in doing the world a large favor.

Yet, there is some dishonesty. Republican Senator Sheryl Nuxoll led the opposition to the measure, testifying to the House committee that it would subject Idaho to Sharia law.  You don’t have to object to Sharia to know that an international child support treaty is a bad idea. Look what international treaty has done to the United States so far. It pretends to do something it rarely truly does.

The treaty does allow states to reject cases that don’t meet state standards, which the Federal Government wants to be Federal standards.

Gratefully, Idaho has an ‘ornery streak.’ Many residents don’t take lightly to being told what to do. Having a foreign government telling them what to do raises more hackles. Idaho Representative Ryan Kerby s voted against it because he felt the federal government was implying, “You need to sign it, and if you don’t we’re going to beat the crud out of you. They were incredibly rude.”

If Idaho does not get in line to approve the treaty, federal officials are prepared to punish the state. At stake is $16 million in funding for Idaho’s child welfare system, which could be cut off within 60 days unless the legislature changes its mind. It is claimed that the loss of federal subsidies would cripple Idaho’s ability to enforce child support orders against parents. The state may also lose $30 million in block grants for children’s programs, which shows the truth about these matters in the eyes of the Feds. This has nothing to do with children. It’s about power and tyranny. Many of us already know of the tyranny of the Federal government by living it first hand. The Feds and the Hague want to have a power trip at the expense of all Americans.

Fed Creates Fugitives From Multitudes of Disadvantaged Dads

Just as Georgia parents begin to challenge the law, the Federal government steps up to bat with parading a new initiative.

The federal government is stepping up its efforts to track down parents who refuse to pay child support through a program inappropriately named “Project Save Our Children,” which targets anyone that owes more than $5,000. If you know of any children this program will save, you can post this information below. You can also let us know why you believe this program is inappropriately named.

This glorious program includes listing names on a new website specifically to track them down. “Strengthen and Vitalize Enforcement of Child Support (SAVE Child Support) Act,” was introduced by New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa. Now you know who the enemies of Constitutional freedom really are. This doesn’t count those that passed the bill.

This law is reportedly designed to:

• Create a national registry to make liens against property easier to track
• Make it easier for states to intercept income and revoke licenses and permits
• Deny passport reinstatement until a parent has paid their arrears in full
• Encourage state support agencies to communicate with corrections agencies to better collect on orders

• View the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement website.
• View a poster of the Top 10 Child Support Evaders in Texas

“You’re talking about a willful intent to avoid paying for your children, for their livelihood, for providing the basics that they so deserve,” said Health and Human Services Deputy Inspector General Gerald Roy. The program is reported have seen some success, and they have been able to get a few parents who owed more than $100,000 to pay up. The matter of oppressing the disabled, underemployed and unemployed isn’t considered. It’s corporate and state exploitation on a grand scale… and most Americans are completely ignorant.

While federal employees themselves don’t go out on the hunt for child support ‘evaders,’ the government does play a key role in requiring that states take certain measures. Title IV-D of the Social Security Act of 1975 mandates and funds corporate enforcement offices. These offices are responsible for helping custodial parents locate ex-spouses, establishing paternity, establishing support orders and enforcing those orders. The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, provides centralized resources for the states, by collecting information from the IRS, Social Security Administration and other agencies. This website believes that this money would be better spent buying down the national deficit or actually benefiting Americans instead of imprisoning and harassing citizens under the pretense of helping children.

How American Freedom Has Been Destroyed

Why the Fourteenth Amendment Doesn’t Exist
How the Constitution Has Been Destroyed

Originally, the Constitution limited the jurisdiction of the federal government by making citizens of the state in which they were born or resided. According to the Constitution, the federal government could only have jurisdiction on a person if they lived in Washington DC or a US territory.

The Federalists who took control of our government after the Civil War, instituted the 14th Amendment to “protect” the former slaves. This amendment allowed the former slaves to come under the Jurisdiction of the Federal Government in order that the Federal Government could protect their Constitutional rights. Many blacks were being abused by people and the local or state governments would not come to their aid. The 14th Amendment may have freed the slaves from oppression of their neighbors, but it gave them and us a new master, the Federal Government. The 14th Amendment makes us citizens of the UNITED STATES AND of the several states. NOTE THE SMALL “c” ON THE WORD CITIZEN. This allows the Federal Government to have jurisdiction over us that it never had before the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment also states (the last section) that the debt of the Federal government cannot even be questioned.

Most people have received their UNITED STATES citizenship when they received their Social Security Card. With the Social Security Card came income taxes. I am not going to go into how we have been put under Statutory (Admiralty) Law; I will simply state that we are under it. We all know this because we need a license (permission to break the law) or permit to do things. A free citizen doesn’t require a license or a permit. Why would a free person require permission from the government to get married, drive a car, start a business, to add onto his/her home or improve his/her property?

Please show me in the US Constitution or your state constitution where a government has the right to demand such obedience? If anyone is arrogant enough to try to use the US Constitution to show such things, please align your argument with the 10th Amendment. How did we get in such a mess, but more importantly, how do we get out of such a mess?

The Congress in session during the time the 14th Amendment was declared law provided people with a way to get out from under these provisions. It is called an apostille. An apostille allows you to deny or renounce your United States citizenship and receive diplomatic immunity. For total freedom, you also must file a UCC-1 lien against your STRAWMAN and a denial of corporate existence against the incorporated local and state governments.

Have you ever noticed that your driver’s license, bank statement, and any bill that you receive is in all capital letters? This is not by accident; there is a legal reason for this.

DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY THE GOVERNMENT OR THE STATE CAN TAKE YOUR HOUSE, PROPERTY, CARS, BANK ACCOUNTS, CHILDREN ETC.?

DO YOU THINK YOU OWN EVERYTHING YOU WORKED SO HARD FOR THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFE?

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TRULY FREE AS GOD INTENDED IT TO BE SO? OR ARE YOU A SLAVE?

ARE YOU A SUBJECT AND PAYING DUTY TO THE CROWN OF ENGLAND THROUGH THE TAX SYSTEM?

WHAT IS YOUR REAL NAME? IS IT JOHN HENRY DOE, IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS OR IS IT, John Henry Doe, IN UPPER AND LOWER CASE LETTERS?

I KNOW THE ANSWERS, BUT DO YOU?

IF YOU WANT YOUR LIFE AND FREEDOM BACK YA BETTER READ ON!

ASSUME THE FOLLOWING:

The United States is bankrupt and has been since 1933. The government has no gold or silver as required by the Constitution. The only asset left is the people. So how does the U.S. finance its daily operations?

Solution, collateralize the people for credit. How? By registering them in international commerce, and selling bonds on them. The people become the surety on the bonds, or the “pledge”. The asset bonded (surety) is the labor of the people which is payable as some undetermined future date. Thus, the people become the “utility” for the “transmission” of energy. Result, a very sophisticated form of peonage or slavery and the Constitution does not apply because the government, on all levels, is thrown into international commerce, the law merchant, now known as the Uniform Commercial Code. [See Public Law 88-244 in which the U.S. Subscribed to private international law. See definition of “goods” under the Uniform Commercial Code; Section 2-105(1) and 9-105(1) in which animals, i.e. humans and their unborn offspring, become “goods” sellable in commerce!]

When a baby is born in the UNITED STATES, a birth certificate is registered with the Bureau of Vital Statistics in the State of birth. The key word here is “registered” as registered in international commerce. The baby becomes the surety, whose energy is due at some future date. REMINDS YOU OF THE MOVIE MATRIX DOESN’T IT. When the birth certificate is registered in the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Department of Treasury issues a bond on the birth certificate ($1,000,000) and the bond is sold at some securities exchange and perhaps bought by the Federal Reserve Bank, which then uses it as collateral in order to issue Federal Reserve Notes or some other form of “debt obligation” (see 18 USC §411). The bond is then held in trust for the Federal Reserve at the Depository Trust Corp. At 55 Water Street, in New York City, about two blocks down the street from the Fed. It is a high rise office building and the sign out front reads “The Tower of Power”. I. E. MATRIX

When the birth certificate is registered, a separate legal entity is created, like a mirror image of the flesh and blood human. This separate entity, or alter ego (THE ALL CAPITAL LETTER NAME) is the “strawman”. (See Black’s Law 6th edition dictionary). And it is the “accommodation party” of the Uniform commercial Code §3-415. The “name” is credit. (See Back’s 6th “accommodation party”). Therefore the right (or the use) has been separated from the title (or deed). The “straw man” holds the title (he belongs to the government’s client who bought the title) and the real live you, flesh and blood man or women has only naked possession with the limited “right” to use the thing (like your body or your alleged possessions and land). Maybe that’s why our civil rights suits get dismissed out of court on Civil Rule 12(b)(6) motions. This deals with “failure to state a title upon which relief can be granted”. A claim is another word for “title”. So we have “failed to state upon which relief can be granted”. We do not own the “title”, even to our own bodies anymore. Isn’t that encouraging! How free are you now?

When the straw man violates some rule or statue (for instance a traffic ticket), the flesh and blood, the real you has to appear at the arraignment and admit the straw man’s name (credit) and the “energy” surety is due and payable (fine) by the flesh and blood man who is in use of the straw man. This, I’m sure, is why it is so important to “voluntarily give” your name to the magistrate (court). The defendant is the straw man. The real you, the flesh and blood man is the “offender”. An “offender” is on the offensive team until he screws up and goes on the defensive team with the defendant (straw man) and looses as the real man.

So if this scenario is correct, how does one get back the bond that has been sold on the birth certificate. And then how does one get in control of his body and his property?

TITLE = RIGHT = REMEDY = RELIEF can only be granted after perfecting the “security interest” in the “goods” (The collateral = pignus = the straw man

DEFINITIONS & MEANINGS

Stramineus homo /straminiyas howmow/. L. Lat. A man of straw, one of no substance, put Forward as bail surety.

Stratocracy /stseokraisiy/. A military government; government by military chiefs of an army.

Straw man or party. A “front”, a third party who is put up in name only to take part in a transaction. Nominal party to a transaction; one who acts as an agent for another for the purpose of taking title to real property and executing whatever documents and instruments the principal may direct respecting the property. Person who purchases property for another to conceal identity of real purchaser, or to accomplish some purpose otherwise not allowed.

At birth your parents and the doctor become the pledger of the birth certificate title to the baby Johnny. The State become the recipient of this pledge for the future energy output of “Johnny”. The state converts the “title security document” into a bond which is sold on the open market place to finance government. The bond holder is the secured party to receive the future energy output of Johnny. Johnny is the mere naked holder and possessor of the body with no title. His duty is to the secured party. To keep your child you must not give it a first name while in the hospital do not fill out the birth certificate papers, put them off permanently. Let the child decide when they are 18 to enter into the fed if they wish.

The definition of the straw man now becomes apparent. The straw man is nom de guerre artificial entity put forth that is owned by the secured party who bought into the bond placed on the market by the Treasury of the United States. The straw man is not yours. It is the front man for the secured party holder of the bond. Whatever the straw man signs, he does so to place title to property in the hands of the UNITED STATES and the bond owner. The straw man does not place title to the property into Johnny’s hands. That is because Johnny does not have title to the straw man. The straw man belongs to the UNITED STATES and the bond owner.

In order to get one’s liberty and independence back, one must first secure the title and ownership of the straw man back. Once one controls the straw man, then one controls the rights of the property that the straw man acquires.

The key to ownership is registration. In a military government, registered property is recognized By the “public” side. If the property is registered on the public side of the government, then the property is public. If the property is registered on the private side, then the property is private with no public interest.

The military government (democracy) has three appointed leaders. The governor, the Secretary Of State, and the Secretary of Treasury. The Secretary of State holds the registration for the Democracy corporation. The public side of the registration is the “corporate filings” at the state And county levels. The private side of the filings are the “Uniform Commercial Code filings” of the creditors to transactions. This registration by the private creditor is the highest priority of recognition by the military State (democracy). If one is not registered, then one is believed to be “foreign” with no rights, private or public, except what is granted by the military law form As a privilege.

For one to regain title to his body, the Birth Certificate must be secured and attached and recorded in the private UCC-1 filings with the Secretary of State in the democracy. Once the living soul has redeemed his Birth Certificate and filed notice of the redemption by a UCC-1 filing with the Secretary of State, then the living soul has the right of property ownership in himself through his straw man who now belongs to the living soul. Furthermore, the bond created and sold in the market place for the straw man now becomes the property of the living soul. The living soul now has the capacity to own real property by allodium and to own private chattel property by the process of the passover, redemption, chargeback, and discharge of public debt.

What’s in a name? Very simple. A name is CREDIT. For any unauthorized person to use your Name or the straw man’s name (when they do not own the title to the straw man) is to violate the laws of “slander of credit”. Once you have redeemed the straw man and own him, then any further commercial process done by any person (like an attorney, a judge, or law enforcement office without your consent) is slander of credit against your straw man. This is a federal criminal securities violation that means prison for them.

Until you redeem your straw man and register his title to you, the living soul, then your straw man becomes the source of the credit for the UNITED STATES to the public affairs of the nation through the “pledge” or gift of your property )your body and energy) to them for their use.

Oppressive Government: Licenses & Child Support

by E.J. Manning

To receive federal grants, each state must require license suspension as a penalty for failure to pay child support. Most states have been on board with this policy since around 2007. Under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, states are required to pass laws that “withhold or suspend, or to restrict the use of driver’s licenses, professional and occupational licenses, and recreational and sporting licenses” of delinquent child support debtors. In Texas alone the license-suspension statute includes fifty-six state agencies responsible for issuing a variety of licenses: appraisers, vets, chiropractors, plumbers, air conditioning and pest control specialists, as well as hunting and fishing licenses.

The purpose of this exploitative tyranny is to drive fear into your soul, to make you crawl on glass, to humiliate you, to make you a butt-kisser. Clearly, the suspension of a citizen’s drivers license is a bad idea where continuing to make an income is concerned. Revoking licenses also give the  government too much control over individual liberties. While it may drive fear and compliance into the hearts of some, most commonly, it  makes a bad situation worse. It has the consequence of making oppressed persons angry and more resentful of the government and of the ex spousal relationship.  The oppressed person may withdraw and become themselves from society, becoming less compliant and even enraged. The oppressed may become part of an underground workforce as they continue to drive at risk with a suspended license, that is, if they can work. Certainly, an attitude that leans towards outrage is the most common reality versus obsequious compliance.

These laws have unintended consequences on decent people that work hard, those that are struggling to get by in a dead economy, or those that need their money the most, the disabled. Many that are able-bodied may begin job hopping because they cannot survive on a small amount left for them in their paycheck. Many times, child support oppression prevents them from catching up entirely, and they become part of a spiraling negative cycle, unable to work their way out. You may be labeled as a liar. Those that are able take a job in another country sometimes do so. Of course, once you leave, you won’t be able to return until you pay your debt. For those that have a passport, the system is only too willing to confiscate your passport in the hope of controlling you. The politicians of the past and the present have a built an insurmountable wall of class oppression for divorced parents.The state disregards any and all personal circumstances, labeling you as a deadbeat. They make no effort to examine the circumstance in your individual situation. If you are behind on your support “you are a liar and a deadbeat.” The government is so concerned about child’s support, they are unaware that they are hurting the child by oppressing the non-custodial parent and reducing his or her integrity. The custodial parent and government insinuate that the other parent is a deadbeat, which damages the child further for life. As far as licenses go, when you get behind again the system will take your license again at their will, often without telling you for months. Do you think that is right? Isn’t that fraud?

Making an agreement with prompt and effective communication doesn’t ensure success. You can be in full communication with the state office with a planned payment for getting caught up, and they take your license anyway. Many times, you are notified after the fact, and three weeks late by mail with a fifteen or twenty day appeal period based on the date of the letter. When the state mails the letter three weeks late, you are denied due process under the law. That is mail fraud as well. This is illegal, but that is not their concern. Deadbeats are worthless. The wheels of the system keep turning like a rusty axle. The system has “authority.” What is my advice to you. You are better off not stressing yourself out by taking their phone calls because the end result being positive is unlikely. This creates a further rift between the oppressed and the tyrannical oppressor, who could be nothing more than a poorly-paid state employee that cares little about their honesty and has a big chip on their shoulder that is probably larger than yours.

It’s a big power trip. The government doesn’t really care about the child, the mother or the father, whether the non-custodial parents are employed, or whether they live at all. All is assumed. Of course, most of you probably know this. All said, a woman can flip out just as easily as a man from the pressure induced by non-caring people and government entities seek to oppress. Ultimately, the system will be rewarded with destruction because oppression doesn’t last forever. That is history.

Finally on your credit record, your license suspension may show up without explanation, which may affect your ability to get insurance.  You may be required to pay more for insurance because of a credit bureau report while the system seeks to rob you of more than you could possibly afford. This affects your credit score, which impacts your ability to borrow to pay child support or for any other purpose. How does making a nation full of enraged men (and women) fulfill the purpose of the country? That is for you to decide. We have become a nation of petty people that satisfy ourselves through the exploitation of others. At least the people that are part of the occupy Wall Street movement are making a noise and working for change through public protest. Oppressed men and women that are under the thumb the Bradley Amendment just hold it in and keep on taking it when we need to fight for fair government and due process under the law as minimum standards. If you have a story or want to share your testimony, just post it here. Giving us your take is completely free.

Oppressive Government: Licenses & Child Support by E.J. Manning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://bradleyamendment.wordpress.com.

USA Law & the Illegal Debtors Prison

by E.J. Manning

It’s not advertised as a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars when you also are behind on your child-support payments. Thousands of so-called “deadbeat” parents are jailed each year in the United States after failing to pay court-ordered child support. It sounds like a bad plot twist from a Charles Dickens novel. This unconstitutional and illegal activity is justified by the system though. It is claimed that the vast majority of non-custodial parents are jailed for deliberately withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they’ve been unfairly gouged by the courts. The truth is that parents are wrongly being locked away without any regard for their ability to pay, even without legal representation.

A 39-year-old Iraqi war veteran found himself in that situation in November, when a judge in Floyd County, Georgia, sent him to jail for violating a court order to pay child support. He was stunned when the judge rebuffed his argument that he had made regular payments for more than a decade before losing his job in July 2009 and had recently resumed working. “I felt that with my payment history and that I had just started working, maybe I would be able to convince the judge to give me another month and a half to start making the payments again… but that didn’t sit too well with him because he went ahead and decided to lock me up.” Miller spent three months in jail before being released, one of six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in March that seeks to force the state of Georgia to provide lawyers for poor non-custodial parents facing the loss of their freedom for failing to pay child support.

Languishing in jail for weeks, months, and sometimes over a year, these parents share one trait besides their poverty. They went to jail without ever talking to an attorney, according to the lawsuit filed by the Southern Center of Human Rights in Atlanta. While jailing non-paying parents does lead to payment in many cases, critics say that it unfairly penalizes poor and unemployed parents who have no ability to pay, even though federal law stipulates that they must have “willfully” violated a court order before being incarcerated. They rightly compare the plight of such parents to the poor people consigned to infamous “debtors’ prisons” before such institutions were outlawed in the early 1800s.

The threat of jailing delinquent parents is intended to coerce them to pay, but in rare cases it can have tragic results. In June, a New Hampshire father and military veteran, Thomas Ball, died after dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself ablaze in front of the Cheshire County Court House. In a long, rambling letter to the local Sentinel newspaper, the 58-year-old Ball stated that he did so to focus attention on what he considered unfair domestic violence laws and because he expected to be jailed at an upcoming hearing on his failure to pay up to $3,000 in delinquent child support, even though he had been out of work for two years.

What the legal loophole? The ability of judges to jail parents without a trial is possible because failure to pay child support is usually handled as a civil matter, meaning that the non-custodial parent is found guilty of contempt of court and ordered to appear at a hearing. As a result, he or she is not entitled to some constitutional protections that criminal defendants receive, including the presumption of innocence. States have a great deal of leeway in family law, which includes child support cases.

The child support program currently serves approximately 17 million U.S. children, or nearly a quarter of the nation’s minors. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that poor parents are not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer when facing jail for non-payment of child support. The justices said that states should use “substantial procedural safeguards” to ensure that those who have no means to pay are not locked up. Accordingly, poor parents are not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer when facing jail for non-payment of child support. The fact remains that the Supreme Court ruling provides very weak protections for poor parents and will not solve the problem of wrongful incarceration of poor parents. The fact remains that even in states where the non-custodial parents do have the right to a lawyer, those without the financial resources to meet their child-support obligations frequently land in jail anyway.

A 2009 study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank in Washington, D.C., found that only half of the child support debtors in California prisons had reported income in the two preceding years. The median net income of the rest of the non-custodial parents was a mere $2,881, well below the U.S. poverty level. Courts often order poor parents to pay too much for child support in the first place, increasing the likelihood that they will fall behind on payments. The percentage of child support that can be removed from a paycheck depends on the laws of the state regarding garnishment.

No one can say how many parents are jailed each year for failing to pay child support, because states typically do not track such cases. The U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics suggest that approximately 10,000 parents were jailed in 2002 for non-payment of child support which represents 1.7 percent of the overall U.S. jail population. That number is undoubtedly up since the U.S. economic meltdown. After the meltdown in October 2008, the child support enforcement program registered a decrease in child support collection for the first time ever. Payments collected from unemployment insurance benefits nearly tripled and the number of cases in which children were receiving public assistance also rose.

Military veterans are especially at risk as they struggle to find work when they leave the armed services. One veteran noted that he fell behind on child support for his 4-year-old daughter after he left the service and couldn’t find work. “I was arrested and I went to jail and they asked me all sorts of questions. I was never told I was under arrest and I was never read my rights. So I did not know what rights I had. Of course, I’ve seen all these movies, but half that isn’t true.” Not having a lawyer in a civil contempt hearing increases the likelihood that the parent will be jailed, even if he or she is not guilty of “willfully” defying the court’s order, say critics of the policy.

In the absence of counsel the opportunity to raise the defense is often missed, and large numbers of indigent parents are wrongfully imprisoned for failure to meet child support obligations every year. The deck is further stacked against the delinquent parent because the state often acts as the plaintiff, seeking to recover the cost of providing public assistance to the child. The state has every benefit to do because they receive money from the Federal Government for collecting child support.

Every state has laws that mandate the illegality of debtors prisons. The state is morally required to give impoverished people a way out. The law says that you can only put non-custodial parents in jail if they have money and won’t pay. That simply isn’t the case and reality proves it.

US Law & the Illegal Debtors Prison by E.J. Manning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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