Behind on child support in the US? If so, you won’t get a stimulus check

If you’re behind on child support, you either won’t get a stimulus check. That is hard news for a group of men and women that have been marginalized and oppressed to the point of tyranny in the last few decades.

The reason for no stimulus check? While the CARES Act suspends debts like overdue student loans or back taxes that typically lead to the garnishment of tax refunds, it doesn’t apply to delinquent child support payments. That means the government’s relief checks will still be garnished if you’re overdue. And some spouses who are filing joint tax returns with their late-paying partners are upset their stimulus money is being withheld for the same reason.

Even if your spouse is solely responsible for the debt, a shared tax refund or stimulus check could be at risk.

According to the experts, docking your stimulus check and sending it to the mother of the child is the way to send it to people that need relief the most. Go figure. Really?

The stimulus payment that is reduced or withheld by the child support owed will go to the appropriate collecting office for the taxpayer’s state. From there, that collecting office will issue the money to the custodial parent, the person due the child support. The time it takes for the money to arrive may vary by collecting office, which varies by state.

Those that have fallen on hard times are being oppressed in the name of child support debt. Owing back child support doesn’t make you a ‘deadbeat,’ nor should it carry a stigma of disapproval or rejection.

IRS typically works with the Office of Child Support Enforcement so the agency is aware of who has fallen behind on child support payments. The Federal government needs to stop punishing families of a person that owes a debt.

Another concern for Americans facing massive numbers of layoffs is whether late child support payments are taken from unemployment checks. The short answer is yes.

If you’re claiming unemployment and a child support order is in place, you will have child support payments withheld. Some states will limit back child support collection to 50% of each check so that the person who owes child support would still collect unemployment, while other states may garnish differently for back child support.

It’s lots of fun in the land of free, as those that owe a debt are continually punished, a very real tyranny that has been held in place for almost two decades.

Child Support & Terrorists

drinking the kool-aid?

Your nation is under attack by terrorists!

When a nation is attacked, people will go to war, risking the loss of life and limb. They are willing to suffer in their standard of living because of what they judge to be a noble or righteous cause. Families are under attack from an enemy within our borders, yet most victims refuse to be part of the war effort.

Instead most injured persons concentrate on their own personal loss by falling into the money trap. They support the enemy, the fascist divorce industrial complex that has swallowed the nation, part of the international unity promoted by the United Nations. Most support terrorists by hiring an attorney, and imagining that they can receive justice in a weighted court system. They may even fool themselves by equating the expense of court with love for their kids. Supporting a fascist terrorist system to achieve justice is insanity of the highest order. Some have fallen into this trap in the past, and now see the light. Most are still lost in the darkness of state propaganda.

Both the military industrial complex and the divorce industrial complex thrive off creation and perpetuation of real or perceived “enemies.” Collusion between private corporations and government corporations, or fascism, is on the increase at the expense of civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Today, the founding documents of the United States are sometimes given lip service, but are commonly violated by modern government officials. Just as foreign wars are profitable for war industries, war within families is profitable for the divorce industrial complex. This industrial complex consists of judges, courts, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, “child support” workers, and all who assist in separating parents who have committed no crime from their children.

Neither industrial complex have use for peaceful resolutions. They thrive from trickery and slander.

Victims of the divorce industrial complex that are still alive need to unite, to fight terrorism against families and against a renegade court system that ignores the foundation of law in the Constitution for a modern take on legal precedence. This tyrannical sickness is being spread across the globe to benefit special interests behind the scenes. No one is safe. A new world order of tyranny is already upon us.

In the United States, the founding fathers provided the means for people to address tyrannical government. This begins with the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees free speech, free press and the right of the people peacefully to assemble to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Exposing the Fascist Divorce Industrial Complex: family court judges, family lawyers, psychologists, social workers, child protective services, child support agencies, and all who assist family courts in the process of diminishing relationships between fit parents and their children.

VIOLATIONS OF CIVIL AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS:

1) Denial of First Amendment Freedoms of Religion and Speech – Parents cannot train up their children according to their beliefs when stripped of parental authority.

2) Denial of First Amendment Right to Petition for Redress of Grievances – Parents, mostly fathers, are denied justice in family courts – their petitions are denied or dismissed.

3) Kidnapping – State “family” court judges steal children from fit, law-abiding parents, perpetuating custody battles.

4) Denial of Fourth Amendment Right to Privacy – Unsubstantiated accusations result in invasion of homes and stealing of children by police or child protective services without probable cause; judges routinely order psych evaluations which invade and probe every detail of private family life of law-abiding parents. Parties who come to court to address legal issues are diverted into a wilderness of psychological evaluations because judges refuse to do their job: enforce the constitutional right to parent, further draining family assets.

5) Denial of Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Rights to Due Process of Law – These include: denial of the right to free counsel for poor defendants, denial of the right to take depositions, lack of evidenciary hearings, lack of notice, and improper standard of proof – with defendants being presumed guilty and being sentenced, like criminals, to loss of the fundamental constitutional right to be a parent.

6) Denial of the Sixth Amendment Right to a Speedy and Public Trial – “Temporary” pendente lite orders in secretive unrecorded hearings usually become permanent orders. Justice delayed is justice denied. Fathers are treated as guilty in either or both criminal and “civil” court upon mere accusation, and are in effect sentenced to loss of the fundamental right to parenthood in civil court even if criminal cases are dismissed.

7) Denial of the Seventh Amendment Right to Trial by Jury – Heartless, treasonous judges make decisions to sever loving parent/child relationships which no jury would allow, which perpetuates continual litigation and profits for the divorce industry.

8) Denial of Thirteenth Amendment Prohibition Against Slavery and Involuntary Servitude – Usually fathers are enslaved as non-custodial parents and forced to pay extortion (so-called “child support”) or risk being thrown into debtors’ prison.

9) False Imprisonment – Fathers are typically arrested first in domestic disputes upon mere accusation. Usually fathers are thrown into debtors’ prisons when they do not or are unable to comply with the illegal extortion/”child support” orders.

10) Denial of Fourteenth Amendment Right to Equal Protection of the Laws – Mothers initiate most divorces and are “awarded” sole custody in the vast majority of contested cases even though both parents are equally fit and loving parents, resulting in state sanctioned gender discrimination and child abuse – stealing one half of the child’s world.

11) Denial of Fourteenth Amendment Liberty Interest in the Family – Numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings have well-established the fundamental liberty interest in the family and the constitutional right to be a parent. Yet, treasonous family court judges daily and routinely ignore and violate the U.S. Constitution and their own state constitutions, and violate their oath of office to uphold those constitutions.

12) Fraud upon family courts – Judges and lawyers of the multi-billion dollar divorce industry increase the amount of custody and family law litigation in contradiction of its alleged purpose – to strengthen and preserve families, by trampling on the rights of U.S. Citizens.

Many professed professionals routinely commit or assist in fraud upon courts of family law as they violate the U.S. Constitution by pretending to act “in the best interest of the child”. Then, under the false pretense, a created need for “child support” caused an unequal custody order, the same renegade, tyrannical judges issue extortion (“child support”) orders against these parents. They even routinely jail parents who do not or are unable to obey their extortion demands in debtors’ prisons of involuntary servitude. This false imprisonment is nothing less than slavery.

This involves a perversion of language in which some acts are given names opposite of the true meanings, the foundation of lies in which families are being destroyed in kangaroo courts across the United States.

PRIMARY EXAMPLES:

A. STEALING A CHILD from a fit parent is called the “BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD”.

B. EXTORTION against a fit parent, necessary ONLY because of the illegal, unconstitutional, forced unequal custody order, is called “CHILD SUPPORT “.

C. INVASION OF PRIVACY when no crime has been alleged is called a “PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION”.

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.

State Admits to Being Dependent on Child Support

reviewed by Moody Jim Rathbone

As the state of Delaware faces fiscal challenges, one area lawmaker, Tim Dukes, says the impact of delinquent child support should not be overlooked. Federal figures indicate nearly $337-million in child support went unpaid in Delaware in Fiscal Year 2014.

Not only does the state collect and hold child support for distribution, but the state corporations receive federal money for successfully collecting child support.

“Unpaid child support is a crisis for thousands of Delaware families affecting our most vulnerable population. Children not receiving support may lack even basic essentials, impacting every aspect of their lives, from their performance in the classroom to their relationships with other children.”

What he isn’t saying is that most of the debt is imaginary. The debt that is legitimate is placed on the backs of the poor population that he claims to be so concerned for.

What he isn’t saying that the state is losing out on approximately $667 million in federal subsidies because they can’t collect $337 million in child support. Are you crying for them yet?

Dukes says the GOP is working in a bipartisan way to develop legislation that would withhold money from court settlements and other financial awards and direct that money to child support obligations.

Write Dukes and tell him to get off the hand-wringing corporate gravy train of pretense. He needs to tell the truth about child support instead of telling half of it, profiting from the ‘goodwill propaganda’ that he makes up. Profiting from child support that often robs and destroys, even from a bankrupt nation that cannot afford federal subsidies for child support,  is the worst kind of tyranny.

Yet, the state can come to depend on it.

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.

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.

The Character Assassination Of Black Men

reposted from ThinkProgress by Moody Jim Rathbone

On Wednesday, the Washington Post obtained a Baltimore Police Department document, which states that a prisoner in the vehicle transporting Freddie Gray heard Gray “banging against the walls” and “intentionally trying to injure himself.” The Post was given permission to publish the information, provided that the name of the witness remained anonymous, yet the newly-released details counter previous reports about the events leading up to Gray’s death. What is consistent, however, is police departments’ selective release of information that paints people injured or killed by police in a bad light — and mainstream media’s decision to buy into it.

Since Gray’s death, BPD’s missteps in arresting him have been well-documented. In widely-publicized videos of the arrest, Gray yells in pain as three officers drag him to their van. They refused to give Gray, an asthmatic, an inhaler. They didn’t put his seatbelt on. And sometime between his arrest and hospital admission, Gray’s voice box was crushed and his spinal cord severed.

But of all the documents compiled during the course of BPD’s investigation, the one given to the Washington Post offers a different narrative: that Gray injured himself. That document minimizes officer responsibility for the 25-year-old’s death, and it’s emblematic of a larger police strategy to deflect blame.

In some instances, officers make false claims that are eventually disproved. Before video of Officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back surfaced, North Charleston police claimed Scott grabbed Slager’s Taser and attempted to use it. The Cleveland Police Department said Tamir Rice was sitting at a table, was told multiple times to put his hands up, and reached for his gun before officers shot and killed him. Video later disproved the department’s claims.

In other cases, police disclose background information that has nothing to do with the encounters in question, but which seems to undermine the character of someone who is no longer alive to defend themselves. Sanford Police told the Orlando Sentinel that, prior to his death, Trayvon Martin (who was killed by a private citizen and not a police officer) was suspended for an empty marijuana baggie. In the case against Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot Oscar Grant in the back while he lay on a train station floor, defense attorneys brought up Grant’s criminal background and history of resisting arrest.

Other times, officials reveal details that fuel local outrage. After Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police Department released a video of Brown robbing a convenience store. The day before, Captain Ron Johnson took to the streets in solidarity with peaceful demonstrators, and many believed the tide was turning. However, the ill-timed release of the video was subsequently perceived as a power play to distract from Brown’s death.

But cops aren’t the only group to affect smear campaigns against victims of lethal police force, as evidenced by the Post’s decision to publish the BPD document. As noted by Al Jazeera, the New York Times published an article about Brown’s recreational activities, saying “he dabbled in drugs and alcohol” and detailed his “rebellious streak.” The Associated Press tweeted that Renisha McBride, who was shot and killed by a Detroit homeowner, was intoxicated. CBS and NBC reported that Scott had a bench warrant for missing child support payments. Northeast Ohio Media Group detailed Rice’s father’s history of domestic violence.

And since the Washington Post article was published last night, people have taken to social media to express their anger:

WaPo isn’t simply smearing someone murdered by police, they are profiting off of smearing someone murdered by police. #FreddieGray

— Remi Kanazi (@Remroum) April 30, 2015

So the Washington Post reports an unnamed prisoner is claiming #FreddieGray willfully injured himself in transport van. For real y’all.

— ReBecca Theodore (@FilmFatale_NYC) April 30, 2015

Complete takedown of the lies spread by the Baltimore Police & Washington Post on #FreddieGray http://t.co/N0aYK0ZETe pic.twitter.com/QALCmbKQOu

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 30, 2015

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.

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.

Rejection of Child Support Measure in Idaho

from the Idaho State Journal

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho is at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal child support funding after conservatives in the Legislature killed a measure that would have brought the state into compliance with federal rules.

The opponents were concerned that passing the legislation could have forced the state to uphold child support rulings made in other countries under Islamic law — a contention others said was baseless.

Health officials said Monday that without a revision they stand to lose access to programs that process child support payments and track down scofflaws, in addition to $46 million in federal payouts.

The conflict started last week after a House committee narrowly rejected a bill that had sailed through the Senate.

The vote came after state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, a Cottonwood Republican, testified that federal regulations incorporated an international agreement regarding child support payments that would subject the state to Sharia law.

UN Global Control Agenda

None of the nearly 80 countries involved in the treaty — the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Family Maintenance, which the U.S. entered in 2007 — is under Sharia law. But Nuxoll and other skeptics said some involved nations informally recognize Sharia courts. They added that Idaho wouldn’t have the authority to challenge another nation’s judgment.

The state’s Attorney General’s Office told the committee, however, that the bill allowed judges to reject cases that don’t meet the state’s standards.

Rep. Luke Malek, a Coeur d’Alene Republican, meanwhile, called the debate an example of “heavy-handed opportunistic theatrics at the expense of single-parents and children.” He and others said the opponents don’t represent Idaho’s GOP caucus.

Still, in a vote that highlighted the conservative streak in Idaho’s Republican-controlled Statehouse, where lawmakers frequently balk at federal mandates, the Rules Committee voted 9-8 to nix the compliance bill, and the legislative session adjourned hours later, throwing the funding and programs into question.

Since the issue affects the state budget, legislators could be called into a special session to revisit the matter.

The governor’s office released a statement Monday, saying officials were “analyzing the impacts of the committee’s actions and what they mean for the 400,000 people who depend on Idaho’s system.”

Gov. Butch Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden both are Republicans.

Idaho Health and Welfare Department officials plan to meet with U.S. Health and Human Services representatives this week. They expect to have 60 days to find a solution from that point.

“This is a new experience for Idaho,” the department said in a statement Monday. “We have been told the federal support for Idaho’s Child Support Program will end if Idaho is not in compliance.”

Without federal tools, parents who are owed child-support payments will have no means to receive them. Idaho uses federal programs to process child support payments.

About 80 percent of payments are taken from paychecks, but noncompliance would prevent Idaho from making such collections.