Feature

The Child Support System: Tangled Beyond Repair?
By Felicia Hodges . Illustrations by Lisel Ashlock

It is 8:45AM on a Monday. Instead of preparing for work, I am preparing for a drive to Family Court. My mission: to find out why my ex-husband has not made regular child support payments in almost a year and a half.

I’ve made so many trips to court in recent months that I could probably drive the route blindfolded. The first trip came when I filed the paperwork to let the court know that the payments had stopped. The second followed three months later—the day my case finally made it to the top of the court-calendar heap and was scheduled to be heard. But since my ex didn’t show up in court, the case was postponed until early July (which made trip number three necessary). We were supposed to appear again in December, but the hearing examiner presiding over the case took ill, forcing the matter to the back of the court-calendar line.

So here I am at trek number four—almost a year to the day since the payments from my ex, which used to help provide financial support for my nine-year-old son, stopped without warning or explanation.

I wish I were the only mom trying to recoup back child support owed to her, but I know I’m not. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, there are about 11.5 million custodial families (families with children who have one parent living elsewhere) in the US—86 percent of which are headed by women. Only 6.2 million (54 percent) of these families have any child support agreements at all. But children still need clothing, food, and shelter whether they live with both biological parents or just one. That’s where child support comes in.

Established in 1975 under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, the Child Support Enforcement Program was designed to help make sure parents take care of their children financially. Part of a federal/state/county partnership, it works something like this: If Mary and Bob Smith separate, and their daughter, Ann, continues to live with mom, Mary can ask the court to issue an order requiring Bob to help with Ann’s living expenses (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) and other needs (like health insurance). If the couple makes less than $80,000 a year, the court uses mandatory state guidelines to determine how much Bob will have to pay. That amount is based on the number of children involved and the parents’ annual incomes. From that, a temporary order for child support is usually granted within a few weeks of the original filing date. A permanent order for support—which can remain in effect until Ann is 18 (or 21 if she is a full-time student)—is supposed to follow shortly thereafter. The amount can be taken directly from Bob’s paycheck, or he can send it to his county support collection enforcement unit (SCEU), where it is processed and sent to Mary. The payments are made to Mary because she is the one actually purchasing the groceries and writing the checks to the landlord or mortgage company each month.

Once there is a court order in place, there are no gray areas about who pays what to whom. If the money is garnished from Bob’s pay, it will continue to be until a new order is granted—say, because Ann has gotten married, graduated from/dropped out of college, turned 18, or is working and supporting herself—even if Bob changes jobs, collects unemployment, or moves to another state. If other circumstances change (say, if Bob is jobless for a while or Ann is diagnosed with dyslexia and Bob has to pay part of the costs of his daughter’s learning coach), one of the Smiths must file a new petition to change the existing court order.

Sounds pretty thorough, right? It was designed to be, but the process starts to fall apart when it tries to catch up with a dad who doesn’t want to pay. Let’s say Bob decides one day that too much of his hard-earned dough is going toward supporting his offspring—or, in his mind, to his child’s mother. He quits his job and begins working off the books somewhere to keep from having his wages garnished. It’s up to Mary to figure out if Bob is simply on a few weeks of unpaid leave or if he has left his job for good. She then has to go back to court and file yet another petition so that Bob can be called in to a child-support hearing to explain what’s going on.

Because Ulster and Dutchess counties require that the non-custodial parent be served in person with the court summons, Mary also has to know where Bob lives or works or be able to find out—even if he has moved to another state. If she can’t find him or if he doesn’t show up for the hearing, the case will be rescheduled for an even later date.

But imagine that the money Mary receives for child support goes directly toward the weekly grocery bill or to cover part of the rent. When it stops, she’s got to figure out a way to cover what child support no longer will. According to 2000 US Census Bureau figures, 29.2 percent of the female-headed households in the state live in poverty. Although Dutchess and Ulster’s numbers are a little better (18.9 percent and 22.5 respectively), these figures suggest that many area female-headed households, already struggling, are barely able to make ends meet when dad can’t pay, won’t pay, or can’t be found and made to pay child support. HURRY UP AND WAITWhy does it take so long for the courts to get a deadbeat parent to pay up?

“Getting an order started is actually one of the easiest things,” says Ulster County Child Support Enforcement Unit Director Patricia Apuzzo. Non-payment violations can take longer to get resolved, she adds, especially when the parent does not comply with the court order. “Family court is so swamped with cases that it can take from two weeks to a month or more before everything even begins,” she says. And remember: all the while that the custodial parent is awaiting a court date, the delinquent parent still isn’t paying a thin dime.

This slow turnaround can seriously hinder families already having difficulty making ends meet. For Susan Moore (not her real name), a graphic artist from Rhinebeck, the very pregnant pause between the last support payment she received from her ex-husband, Tom, and their first appearance in court sent her into a financial tailspin.

“Payments had been missed before, like when Tom went on unpaid vacation or was sick, so it took me about three weeks to realize what was going on,” she says. “I called the support collection unit and they called his job, who said he no longer worked there. They told me they’d file a violation on my behalf but that I should not expect a court date for a while because the courts were so behind.”

Susan says she filed the violation in mid-May, but when she finally got an early July court date, Tom didn’t show up. The hearing was postponed until the end of August, when Tom was arrested for failing to appear in court.

But the biggest problem for her family was that anytime Tom lost or quit a job, the children’s health insurance went with it, forcing Susan to shell out a lot of money for prescription drugs and doctor visits to help manage her youngest child’s diabetes. “At one point, I was spending about $200 a month in prescriptions alone,” she says. “Add that to the almost $5,000 in child support that has not come over the past nine months and you can see how the little savings we did have has dwindled down to almost nothing.”

The slow family court machine is only one part of the equation, though. County SCEUs—the local agencies that handle the cases and distribute the money to the custodial parents—are just as swamped. According to Dutchess County SCEU Commissioner Robert B. Allers, the county had 10,472 active cases in January but only 14 case workers. Apuzzo says that the 12 to 14 caseworkers in the Ulster County SCEU handle about 900 cases each. And because the positions “are not the best paying” gigs in the world, she says, the caseworker turnover is often high, which can cause confusion and frustration for a custodial parent navigating the system for the first time.

In the four-and-a-half years since she moved to Ellenville from Pennsylvania, Sharon Mura has had six different caseworkers through the Ulster County SCEU. “My ex-husband was in arrears but was driving a Corvette he claimed was a gift,” she says. Using DMV records, she found a bill of sale proving not only that he actually did purchase the car but that he had more assets at his disposal than he disclosed in court. “When I told the support collection unit about what I found, they basically said, ‘Oh well.’ No one should have to work that hard to get what their kids are owed,” she said. “To me, it looks like a very laid-back process. I don’t have time to be laid-back—I’ve got bills to pay. I’m not looking to make [my ex-husband] destitute, but I’m not looking for him to make my kids destitute either.”

The frustrations Sharon encountered with the SCEU inspired her to become a paralegal. The first thing she bought was a copy of the NYS Family Law so she could see for herself what the courts and the SCEU can and cannot do. “This system just does not work, I don’t care what anybody says,” she adds.

New York does have ways of dealing with parents who are behind with their child support. A non-custodial parent can have federal and state income tax refunds as well as state lottery winnings over $600 taken. Liens can be put on property owned by a parent in arrears (including real estate, cars, boats, etc.). Delinquencies are supposed to be reported to credit bureaus, and bank accounts of those owing support can also be frozen. Driving, professional, occupational, and recreational licenses of a non-paying parent can be suspended, and the US State Department can even deny a passport to a parent more than $5,000 in arrears. But all these remedies take time, and only a few actually garner what is owed to the families that need it.

Delinquent parents can also be sent to jail for up to six months for failure to pay. Arrest is usually one of the first threats the judges and hearing examiners make—with the hope it will provide enough incentive to make the parent pay up. But many delinquent parents know how slowly the system works and use that to their advantage.

“They duck, hide, quit a job, and do what they can not to pay child support,” says Seymour Benson, a former circuit judge and mediator who now practices family law in Orlando, Florida. Some avoid it by getting paid under the table so their wages can’t be reported to the support collection agencies or the IRS, while others transpose a few digits in their social security numbers or use fake ones altogether.

“The biggest problem in New York state is the off-the-books workers and self-employed workers,” says Mary Ellen Tripp. Tripp is New York State Project Director of the Association for Children for the Enforcement of Support (ACES), a national, nonprofit child-support organization that works to improve child-support enforcement via legal-rights information and public awareness about the effects nonpayment has on children. “From sub-contractors to hiding 1099s, there are ways to hide income. Meanwhile [the delinquent parent] goes home in a new convertible.” THE SUPPORT-VISITATION CONNECTIONFor a lot of delinquent parents, paying child support is related to visitation. In other words, if dad is not seeing the kids, he’s less likely to pay support. “[The mother] might remarry, move, or modify the visitation to accommodate her work schedule. [The father] gets mad and hits back with nonpayment of support and justifies it by her actions,” Benson says. “Usually you get angrier when you know you’re at fault. It’s a shame, but it happens all the time.”

Lisa Witherspoon (not her real name), a distribution manager for a freight company in LaGrangeville, says support payments stopped a few weeks after visitation between her daughter and her ex-husband was suspended while abuse allegations against him were being investigated.

“He’s self-employed, so he just stopped sending checks,” she says. But even when the visitation resumed, the support did not, and Lisa had to go to court to get the original order enforced. In the year since the payments started again, her ex has still not caught up with what he owes in arrears.

“It’s a problem because my child hasn’t stopped growing or eating in that time. Whenever she washes her hands or flushes the toilet, someone has to pay the water bill. Whenever she sits down at her desk to do her homework, the electricity used by the desk lamp has to be paid for—it’s not just about clothes and food,” she says. “It must be nice to be able to wear your parenting responsibilities like a jacket you can just put on or take off whenever you feel like it. But as the parent who cooks her child’s meals, helps with her homework, and tucks her in each night, I don’t have that option.” NAVIGATING THE SYSTEMTripp says it is crucial to know the law and how it can be used to receive or maintain support payments. It will be beneficial not only to the children, but to society as well.

“People think this is a family matter, but it isn’t,” says Tripp. “Families who don’t get the support they need can end up on welfare, where it becomes everyone’s problem.” For custodial parents who find themselves hopelessly tangled in the system, she suggests they do the following: HANDLE SUPPORT AND VISITATION ISSUES IN FAMILY COURT BEFORE FILING FOR DIVORCE: The terms and conditions of divorce can take years to hash out, delaying all judgments including those regarding support. So deal with support and visitation issues separately.

KNOW THE RULES: Don’t wait until you’re in court. Call your county SCEU and ask for details about the process from your caseworker. Or find out all you can by logging onto the state child-support Web site (www.newyorkchildsupport.com/home.html) or the ACES Web site www.childsupport-aces.org/). Says Tripp, “You have to educate and empower yourself.”

HAVE CASEWORKERS RUN THE NON-CUSTODIAL PARENT’S CREDIT REPORT: All of your ex’s child-support arrearages should appear in the records. If they don’t, ask the caseworker to add them.

INDICATE “WILLFUL” ON THE VIOLATION PETITIONS: This asks the court to investigate whether or not your former partner had the means and/or ability to pay but did not, which is important if he or she is purposely trying to avoid paying child support.

TAKE SOMEONE TO COURT WITH YOU: “Judges act differently when someone else is in the room,” Tripp says. The person may be asked if his or her appearance is necessary for the proceeding, but if you tell the hearing examiner or judge that you want the person in the room, it will be allowed.

GIVE THE DELINQUENT PARENT TIME TO PAY: Tripp says that in 95 percent of the cases, parents found guilty of violating the court order come up with the money, as long as they are given three months to pay. Attorney representation can help, but getting a lawyer can require retaining fees that parents who are barely scraping by may not be able to afford. There are also private collection groups that can help get past-due support, but they can demand as payment as much as one-third of the amount owed. That might work if $20,000 is owed, but if the parent is $2,000 in arrears, going with a collection group won’t be worth it.

REMEMBER THAT THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU: The sad reality is that when support payments stop, it’s up to the custodial parent to put the wheels in motion. Be diligent: Don’t wait for the caseworker to call you with updates about the status of the case. If things seem to be taking an extraordinary amount of time, call your SCEU to find out why.

It’s really a shame that it should take court orders, hearing examiners, judges, attorneys, and collection-unit caseworkers to make parents do right by their children, but it often does.

“Somewhere along the line,” Benson says, “there has to be an understanding that if you bring a child into this world, you are obligated to support him or her—whether it is an ‘Oops!’, one-night-stand sort of thing or you were married for 10 years. The law will help enforce it, but it is really a moral obligation on the part of the parents who are supposed to pay. The system can be effective, but in certain instances it works against the person it is most supposed to support.”