Child Support
In the early 1970s, the women's liberation movement changed how marriage, family, and
values. Groups like the National Organization for Woman (NOW) led many to gain their
metaphorical independence from their oppressor husbands and fundamentally changed the family
structure forever. Many women longer wanted assistance from men and push for independence.
The independence movement was not exclusively for married women, but it also included single
women in their ranks.
With the creation of no-fault divorces and the advent of this new category of Family Court
proceedings, there was a surge in divorces case. And out of wedlock births in the United States.
This surge of newly divorced women with children and never-married women with children
+requesting financial assistance grew during this time. Divorces led numerous families to fall at
or below the federally indicated poverty level.
The decade of the 1970s saw a steady increase in the single-parent lead home. According to
Lehrman, R (1993), the proportion of children living in American children living outside two-
parent families jumped from 15 percent in 1970 to 27 percent in 1989. Including those children
who live with married couples, about 40 percent of all children live with at least one biological
parent. Children living with never-married mothers subject to the highest poverty rates (67
percent in 1989) now account for 7 percent of all children (p. 171).
During this time, so many parents living separately from each also failed to work
cooperatively in the children's rearing. The failure to co-parent has pushed newly emancipated
women and their children into poverty and on to the welfare rolls. The increase of low-income
families applying and receiving public assistance mandated a reevaluation by the government of
the causes of the surge in numbers.
Office of Child Support Enforcement
The Child Support System in the United States has become a monster with a life of its. A
profitable economic revenue stream for the state that has to spawn a private growing industry. It
is an organism that has taken men of all walks of life and snatched the life is out of them. By all
intensive purposes has reduced them to indentured servants to the state.
It has been a national secret for the millions of black and brown Americans unless that reside in a
low-income community where every woman is well versed in the field of child support law in
which many provide pro bono advisory services.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) does not keep records of child support arrest,
unlike many other crimes statistics found in the uniform Crime Records (UCR). According to
Lollar, C (2018), national Data is at least one source asserts that about 50,000 people in the United
States for this offense of failure to pay child support. Another study out of South Carolina found one in
eight of those incarcerated in county jails were there for failure to pay. Georgia incarcerated 3,500
parents for outstanding child support obligations in a single year. An estimated one-quarter of inmates in
federal or state prisons have an open child support case (p. 128).
The child support system has many problems in its current iteration. First and foremost, it is
overly punitive on all levels against noncustodial parents, especially noncustodial fathers.
Many states are using more and more aggressive tactics in pursuit of the collection back child
support. These tactics include suspension of driver licenses, professional licenses, vehicle
registrations, salary garnishments, Tax offsets, and the ever-looming threat of incarceration.
The state is prosecuting an increasing number of fathers throughout the country for non-
payment of child support. The prosecution and imprisoning of men for non-payment of child
support debt reconstituted an informal debtor prison system found unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of the United States since 1833 and again in 1983. Since debtors' prison has
remained unconstitutional, arresting and imprisoning an individual for debtor like child support
is unconstitutional. However, unfortunately, the states have created a workaround for the
unconstitutionality of such a system.
The state's workaround is to charge an individual(s) with contempt of court, which in of itself
misrepresented the actual crime. Contempt of court, as defined, is the willful failure to obey an
order of the court. Nevertheless, if a noncustodial father's income is too low not to pay child
support, he can be in contempt? Many noncustodial fathers themselves live below the federally
indicated poverty level, making pay child support almost impossible.
As a society, we cannot continue for numerous reasons, one of which Lollar, C (2018) more
troubling from an institutional perspective, fathers with little to income are helping finance the
government's child support enforcement system. Federal law requires custodial parents who receive state
assistance to assign their child support payments to them. Thus, any child payment by the noncustodial
parent will go straight to the government as reimbursement for the state assistance it has provided to the
custodial parent. If the father does not pay the child support as ordered, even when the failure is due to
insufficient income on which to live and pay the debt, the government punishes the fathers with criminal
charges or possible incarceration for not reimbursing the cost of the state assistance. In other words,
poor fathers are criminally sanctioned and incarcerated for failing to finance the government's welfare
programs and child support system, despite the inability to do so (p. 128).
Parental Civil War
In 1996 the then President of the United States Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), better known as the
Welfare Reform Act. The law came about because of public opinion, which put pressure
Keeping one of his campaigns promises to end the welfare system in its current iteration and
fundamentally changing the system for millions of public assistance and child support
entitlement for recipients throughout the country.
The new child support law implemented a series of enforcement efforts with the intended
punitive effect of financially damaging noncustodial parents (mostly black and brown men) for
falling behind on their court-ordered child support payments. Them in that starting by
suspending driver licenses, professional licenses, garnishment of wages, Tax refunds offsets, and
recreating debts prisons, while demonizing fathers, plunging poor already fathers further into
poverty.
Millions of children in America today are growing up without a father in the household.
Millions of others are growing up with a part-time father in their lives. There is a common
denominator among the two groups they lost their fathers through either divorce, separation, or
never lived with them at no point in their lives and child support policies. This phenomenon is
especially prevalent in the black and brown communities across the United States.
Many fathers disengaged from the children, and many more have truly little to do with their
children's rising, leaving them void of the all-important father figure. Unfortunately, many of
these men, as per policymakers, are African American.
African American and Hispanic men receive the majority of the blame for all the social failures
within the black and communities. The failures include but are not limited to the juvenile crime
rate, substance abuse and addiction, high unemployment. Politicians from both parties have
especially been critical of the absent fathers' issue within black and brown families. According to
Maldonado, S (1996), paternal absence in African American families, fatherlessness as a
distinctly a Black problem and blaming fathers' absence for many of the social ill plaguing
American communities (p.994).
This social breakdown of black families in academia and criminal justice circles has had a
divesting effect on the entire family. Issues of teen pregnancy, truancy, and high crime rates are
just a few of the issues blamed on black men and men from all sides.
Deadbeat or Dead Wrong
A metaphor is an incredibly powerful tool employed by politicians to help create an easily
digestible image. A metaphor uses one's experiences to interpret what they hear or see into
something they can understand. Every public official has one they use to take out and mentally
construct as needed by their constituents. In the late 1970s, Ronald Regan, then a candidate for
the United States' Presidency, created an allegory of the Welfare Queen. This individual
committed various frauds of government-provided social programs. According to Cammatt, A
(2014), she has 80 names, 30 addresses, and 12 Social Security cards and collects veterans'
benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands.
Moreover, she is collecting Social Security cards. She has got Medicaid, getting food stamps,
and she is collecting welfare under each name. Her tax-free cash income alone was over
$150,00.00 per year (p. 244). $150,00.00 a year is a substantial amount of income in any era, but
in the 1970's it was a windfall. This story was a complete fabrication by the Republican
presidential candidate. They created an image of a welfare cheat to help push forward their anti-
welfare anti-social programs agenda. The conservative right needed a bogie man for the
American populous to hate, and the myth of the Welfare Queen was born.
In the 1990s, the deadbeat dad's myth has been made notorious by the media, policymakers,
feminist groups, and the public alike. The deadbeat dad's image made famous by conservative
politicians and Women's Rights groups is of having multiple children with multiple women.
Leaving them unsupported morally and refusing to provide financial support to his children is
left for the government to support the family. This concept was so successful that it changed not
public opinion, but it helped shape public policy for years to come.
This metaphorical individual was a construct by many policymakers that were already against
any social programs that helped poor black families pushed the reduction and elimination of
social programs. The Deadbeat dad's legend started as a metaphorical symbol of the
dysfunctional, disorganized, and lazy mother-led black family unit. A family structure unfamiliar
to many white politicians of the 1960s whose image of the was a father, mother, and children all
residing in the same home.
According to Cammatt, A (2014), the broken family concept, another ubiquitous metaphor,
headed by poor single mothers in need of rehabilitation and absent fathers, is another powerful
cultural narrative informing poor black families' social construction. The deadbeat dad's image
also slowly emerged as a racialized trope: an uncaring black father unwilling to pull his weight,
with multiple families, who expect taxpayers to carry his burden (p. 238).
The Deadbeat dad imagery was an easy one for the public to grab hold of; it pushed the
dysfunctional intimate union narrative that takes advantage of the system in which the taxpayers
are subsidizing. Many believe that absent fathers can provide for their child (ren) financially but
refused to. Many blame the so-called deadbeat dad for all the social ills in low-income areas.
Everyone hates them without so much as understanding if they can not support their child(ren).
Many men, especially men of color, live at or below the federal poverty level making it
difficult to support themselves, let alone a child(ren). Many poor men face formidable barriers
making it incredibly difficult to become employed. Criminal history, poor education, minimal
work experiences, and drug addiction, limiting their ability to support their children.
Office Child Support Enforcement and The Father
The Office of Child support enforcement is the punitive division of the child support system.
The department's only purpose is collecting support payments and arrearages and reducing child
poverty. Office Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) It is also tasked with establishing paternity
for child support cases. From the aspect of legally authenticating paternity, the program has been
successful. However, with the success of the program came the unintended consequences.
The office of child support enforcement (OCSE) has a federal government's financial
incentive to locate and garnish as many noncustodial fathers as possible. If they reach the
targeted number of fifty percent or above-established paternity cases, the state will receive the
specific monetary amount. If they miss their targeted number, they will not receive funds for the
Public Assistance program.
According to Harris, L (2011), a longitudinal study of about 5,000 children born in urban
areas in the United States, called the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, shows that
child support enforcement practices are harmful to many poor, nonmartial children and their
custodial mothers, in some cases reducing economic support from the fathers and disrupting
fathers relationships with the children (p. 159).
As previously stated, the damage caused by child support and its punitive guidelines has long-
lasting consequences for the entire family, undermines the child(ren)/father(s) relationship. The
unequal enforced policies have destabilized and targeted low-income black and brown families.
Low-income non-married fathers are the actual targets of the enforcement program. They are the
ones that draw the most anger from society, policymakers, and politicians. They are often called
irresponsible and deadbeats. Most of these men are not deadbeat but are bead broke with little
employment opportunities and large child support arrearages.
Harris (2011), Data from the fragile families and child-being study discloses that unmarried
parents are particularly at risk for poverty because they are younger and less educated than
married ones. On average, the unmarried mothers were seven years younger than married
mothers, and the unmarried fathers were six years younger than married fathers (p. 160).
One of the blearing omission of the enforcement program is how they treat mothers. The
majority of women participating program have traded their family's stability for the entire
amount of the public assistance check. Many mothers will voluntarily provide information about
their child (ren) to avoid the 25% percent reduction of public assistance benefits.
In black and brown communities that mothers can and receive whatever they want, just invoking
the threat of child support—the family court system, which has divided the definition of a father
into two distinct categories. The first category is the biological father; this is the individual that
shares the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) with the child (ren) in question.
The second category is the punitive father. A punitive father is an individual that is not a
biological father of a child but is raising the child (ren) as though he is the biological father. In
the United States, a father's rights to the child(ren) continued on legal connection and time than
biological bonds.
Child Support and the Office of Child Support Enforcement
The author will also examine the current child support enforcement model and how it has
negatively affected the policy's intended target in the United States. Outline the consequences of
this policy on poor black and brown families. Factor(s) have had and continue to influence its
implementation, including but are not limited to the growth of influence during women's rights
movement, race, gender-specific gender myths, and anti-social service program statement.
Connect child support with visitation. It makes parental alienation on the part of the alienating
parent a class "C" felony and subject to removing the child(ren) from home without cause or
prejudice.
The author will make a series of recommendations to the system, making it more applicable to
noncustodial parents' 21st-century issues.
The first recommendation is the most significant change to the system. Anyone who has received
child support income through the Department of Social Services on or after August 22, 1996,
must reimburse the state 50 percent of any distributed funds, including all taxes and interest
accrued from the first-day attainment from such income.
1) Enforcement on all income in the home applies regardless of age and source income if no
income can be found to the individual, a financial lien on all individual(s) assets on the case at
the enforcement order.
2) A financial lien with be placed on all bank accounts connected to the individual. No resources
will be allowed to be with the dawn from any accounts regardless of reason without court
documentation. All court-ordered actions for the release of funds will be subject to immediate
appeal.
3) The individual will have his/her passport immediately revoked. If in possession of the
document in question, the individual must return it to the United States Department of State
until such time that zero balance has been attained.
4) Remove the financial incentive in a block grant provided to the states by the government.
5) Making for-profit companies liable for profiteering off the damage of the custodial parent.
Also removing all bankruptcy protection for the Chief Executive Officer and board of trustees.
6) Any child found not is biologically connected to the noncustodial parent will be automatically
subject to disestablishment, and the custodial parent will be subject to a fine of $200,00.00
and a prison sentence of no less than ten years state prison.
The consequences, as per the recommendations, will be felt immediately. The author's
recommended policy changes are ones that provide more just systems for black and brown
feathers. No longer will he have to work multiple jobs to put food on the child's table and
himself. The individual(s) that have been made homeless because of the astronomical amount of
child support will afford a stable home himself.
For those with a second family, the current wife carries the burden of providing the family's
majority income to support will relieve some of the burdens. Removing or Lessing the collateral
issues that comes with the financial stressors of having child support. Issues like increased acts
of domestic violence, increase alcohol consumption, and high rate divorce.
She will no longer hide the new husband/boyfriend; income can no longer from the courts. No
longer can she use the child support income as a personal slush fund without any oversight. She
can now face real criminal consequences for the mismanagement of funds. The penalties faced
by the custodial parent for transgressions would be just too significant to be irresponsible.
These are recommendations that can easily be implemented by the state and the Department
of Social Services with limited interruptions to the day-to-day operations. The issues will be with
the older workers and females’ workers within the agency. They will have to retrain in the new
way of doing business.
Unequal Justice
When a woman gives birth to a child before they leave the hospital, the child's father, if present,
sign a Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity (VAP), confirming he is the child's father. The
VAP form mailed to the Office of Vital statistics for the official registration. The states provide
two months if any issues arise; the parents can rectify the issue (s). Once the father signs the
Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity (VAP) for many, that is the first round in an eighteen-
year war with the government that may cost him his freedom.
In 1975 The Social Security Title IV-D Act established the federal Office of Child Support
Enforcement (OCSE). The office is to oversee the child support enforcement and support
collection program at the state-level. Written into the provision was funding for the states to
manage the programs. The federal government reimbursed states as much as 75% percent in
administrative fees.
This newly instituted revenue stream provided the states with a financial incentive to track
down and legally process as many noncustodial fathers' as possible with the understanding that
must meet the target numbers. If they do not meet the goal by then, the federal government takes
away money.
This Financial incentive is the first of many problems included in the child support system.
The child support system's first issue is the federal government's financial incentive, which acts
as a bounty on most noncustodial fathers' wallets.
The second issue is the system's overly punitive actions against noncustodial fathers. The
system criminalizes poor black and brown men. The third and most blatant inequality is the
Noncustodial fathers with arrearages have been viewed with contempt by society, and the same
group of people has viewed noncustodial mothers (deadbeat mothers) sympathize with the same
arrearages.
The 1996 Welfare Act (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act)
H.R. 3266 passed by then-President Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, speaker of the
congressional Speaker of House. This bill supercharged low-income fathers' criminalization by
giving more autonomy to the states, providing them with a more extraordinary ability to pursue
and increase civil sanctions up to criminal charges against low-income fathers.
The revolving debt
In the past 26 years, enforcement of child support orders in the United States by both public
and private agencies has increased exponentially. Most politicians and the public are not aware
that child support payments have interest added to them, which fluctuate according to the state.
Child support debt disproportionally affects black and brown low-income noncustodial fathers,
now add interest to the already mounting debt and what ones have is soul-crushing. According to
Brito, L (2019), Child support debt is a significant yet underexamined problem in the United
States. The magnitude of the debt is staggering, on a national, individual, and family level,
particularly for those with no-and low income (p. 954).
In 1975 the Social Security Act Title IV-D was introduced and signed into law; the amount of
child support owed by noncustodial fathers has increased by 263 percent. The number of owed
child support will increase in the coming years because the noncustodial fathers who owe are the
individuals who least can make payments. Many of them live at or below the federally indicated
poverty level. Brito (2019) approximately a quarter of noncustodial parents in the child support
system is referred to as dead broke dads and unable nonpayers, meaning they have a limited
ability to pay the support they owe; the issue is that they owe a disproportional amount of the
national debt (p. 954).
Child support is an insidious social construct. Its built-in gender bias and inequity are on
display for all to view. It traps many noncustodial fathers in a life perpetual in debt and misery
for the crime of being poor. Imagine having a master card bill that must pay for an entire lifetime
with an interest rate from four to twelve percent; millions play that scenario through the United
States. Now take away the master card and replace it with a child support payment, which the
fathers face every day.
The child support amounts that many fathers owe are constructs of what judges,
policymakers, and politicians believe that it cost to raise a child(ren). The child support orders
are without regard to the actual amount. They also included in their theory what a noncustodial
father should earn in the open job market. Often, child support orders provided to fathers are
skewed critically by overt and covert racial and gender biases in place of an excellent judicial
dissertation.
Nationally fathers that stated that they earned as much as $10,000 (which is below the federal
poverty level) a year make up seventy percent of the child support debt. This level of debt is just
unsurmountable and unsustainable. Policymakers and politicians have saddled noncustodial
fathers with such accumulate debt, reaching ten thousand per individual. This type of
exploitation under any other setting would cause a congressional hearing into predatory behavior.
Brito, L (2019) When families apply for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash
assistance, they must sign over the state their right to child support. Any child support owed while the
family received TANF cash assistance is owed to the government. The child support debt is not owed by
the noncustodial parents who will not pay; instead, it is owed by parents who cannot pay. As a result of
the legislative reforms that strengthened and automated child support, noncustodial parents who have the
money to pay support do so (p. 960-961).
As stated earlier in writing, many of the fathers who owe the child support arrears are poor.
The majority of them earn less than $6,000.00 annually, which puts them well below the federal
poverty level ($12,760/single household). Most fathers employed full-time earn slightly more
than the previous category men that are considered the working poor.
Debtor prison
The state governments nationally started to charge noncustodial fathers with contempt of
court compared to child support debt's non-payment. Contempt of court gives the impression of
failing to comply with a judge's order where non-payment of child support debt is easy for
people to make the connection between debtors' court and prison and credit card debt. The
government, as a marketing campaign, created and pushed the mythological Deadbeat dad for
public consumption.
We all have heard of the Walter Scott case in South Carolina, where a police officer stopped a
noncustodial father for a broken taillight. As the officer approached the vehicle, Mr. Scott opened
the car door and Feld. The police officer pursued Mr. Scott and fired eight times, hitting him five
times in the back and killing him. After an investigation, they discovered that the reason why Mr.
Scott ran was the fear of returning to a South Carolina debtor's prison system for non-payment of
child support for the fourth time. Mr. Scott was on a path that eventually would lead to his by the
mother of one of his children as retribution for not paying child support.
During the summer of 1996 (August 22, 1996), President Clinton signed a series of bills as
part of the omnibus spending bill, including the Immigration Reform, Immigration
Responsibility Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-28.) and the infamous Welfare Reform Act of the same
year. With the signing of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the debtor's prison system reinstated
in the United States with the blessing of an ignorant public.
Across the United States, State courts are sending noncustodial fathers to jails and prisons for
the crime of being too poor to pay their child support obligations. This inflexible system makes
extraordinarily little distinction between noncustodial fathers with the means that refuse to be
their child support and the destitute one. The noncustodial fathers that have a trophy wife and the
ones that do not have enough to eat. State-level Office Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) see
all noncustodial father through the same jaded prism.
In 1833 was the last time an individual confined for a debt. The United States abolished
debtors' prison, making it unconstitutional to imprison an individual for owing a debt. The
Supreme Court found that this system affected the poor and working-class disproportionately.
Debtors prison was put in place again, this time pre-antebellum America. According to Jones, M
& Johnstone, P (2012), another restraint on freedom existed in the practice of debt imprisonment.
Those unable to pay their creditors in pre-Civil War America frequently found themselves
thrown in jail until the obligation was satisfied. Once imprisoned, the unfortunate man had his
benefits deprived, including the opportunity to earn money for the repayment (p. 189). The
unconstitutionality of the debtor's prison-issue reevaluated; In 1983, the Supreme Court of the
United States (SCOTUS)
found debtors prison to be unconstitutional one-hundred years after the last prison was closed.
In the Welfare Reform Act, the federal government found a way to get around the
unconstitutionality of debtors' prison. They formulated a plan and put child support non-payment
cases in the Family court system to fail to scrutinize the public and media. In the family court
system, these cases received the stringent disclosure rules applicable to all other cases. The most
effective tactic applied by the government, making these cases not criminal, will not provide
legal representation for poor fathers, leaving them at the mercy of an unjust racially and gender-
biased court system.
Numerous judicial challenges brought before states Supreme Courts directly respond to an
individual's ability to pay child support; one such case was Bearden V. Georgia. In this case, the
legal premise brought before was court should the state consider a person's ability to pay a debt.
According to Lollar, C (2018), the court found that the reasons for non-payment were of critical
importance. If a probationer willfully fails to pay a fine, restitution, or fee when he has the means to pay,
imprison is a permissible sanction; likewise, if a person has not made "bona fide efforts" to seek
employment in order to pay off criminal justice debt, imprisonment justifiable. However, if someone has
made reasonable efforts to pay off the debts and cannot do so, "it is fundamentally unfair" for the courts
not to consider where adequate alternative methods of punishing the defendant are available. If the court
has determined that a fine of restitution is the appropriate and adequate penalty for the crime, it cannot
convert that sentence into a prison sentence solely because it cannot pay that fine or restitution. To do so
is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment (p. 146).
The legal take away from this case is simple courts should apply an individual's ability and
willingness test to the facts—the only is to consider an individual's ability to pay. The Bearden
case has not deterred courts from selectively or, in many cases, purposely failed to apply any
income tests to make it justifiable to miss child support payments. Many poor fathers have to
decide between paying child support or paying for food. Lollar, C (2018) As of 2015,
Approximately ten million people owed more than fifty billion dollars in criminal debt (p. 147).
The purpose of the child support system is clear. It keeps whom society views as undesirable
or unworthy from having irresponsible sex and producing a child. If a child is born to a non-
married couple and can afford to support his prodigy, the agency will punish him. The agency
will put in a metaphorical and financial prison.
Recommendations
The child support system's original intent was to punish poor noncustodial fathers for any
services for the children and, at the same time, criminalizing them for the crime of being low-
income and unworthy.
The current child, support enforcement model is unsustainable for many reasons, one of which
is that it disregards entirely any income the custodial parents and l and how it has negatively
affected the policy's intended target in the United States. Outline the consequences of this policy
on poor black and brown families. Factor(s) have had and continue to influence its
implementation, including but are not limited to the growth of influence during women's rights
movement, race, gender-specific gender myths, and anti-social service program statement. The
removal of the federal government's financial incentive to the states for operating the program is
vital to habituate
Connect child support with visitation. It made parental alienation on the part of the alienating
parent a class "C" felony and subject to removing the child(ren) from home without cause or
prejudice.
The author will make a series of recommendations to the system, making it more applicable to
noncustodial parents' 21st-century issues.
The first recommendation is the most significant change to the system. Anyone who has
received child support income through the Department of Social Services on or after August 22,
1996, must reimburse the state fifty percent of any distributed funds, including all taxes and
interest accrued from the first day the order was attainment.
7) The new rules apply regardless of age and income source. If no income is available to the
individual, a financial lien will be assigned on all individual(s) assets on the case at the time of
enforcement order.
8) A financial lien with be placed on all bank accounts connected to the individual. No
resources will be allowed to be with the dawn from any accounts regardless of reason
without court documentation. All court-ordered actions for the release of funds will be
subject to immediate appeal.
9) The custodial parent will have his or her passport immediately revoked. If in possession of
the document in question, it must be returned to the United States Department of State until
the balance has reached zero.
10) Remove the financial incentive in a block grant provided to the states by the government.
11) Making for-profit companies liable for profiteering off the damage of the custodial parent.
Also removing all bankruptcy protection for the Chief Executive Officer and board of
trustees.
12) Any child discovered not biologically connected through DNA to the noncustodial parent
will be automatically subject to disestablishment, and the custodial parent will be subject to a
fine of $200,00.00 and a prison sentence of no less than ten years state prison. Any arrears
have accumulated due to the paternity fraud will be paid to the Department of Social
Services. In addition to any legal fees, the final judgment all arrears against the custodial
parent.
The consequences, as per the recommendations, will be felt immediately. The author's
recommended policy changes are ones that provide more just systems for black and brown
feathers. No longer will he have to work multiple jobs to put food on the child's table and
himself. The individual(s) that have been made homeless because of the astronomical amount of
child support will afford a stable home himself.
For those with a second family, the current wife carries the burden of providing the family's
majority income to support some of the burdens. Removing or Lessing the collateral issues that
comes with the financial stressors of having child support. Issues like increased acts of domestic
violence, increase alcohol consumption, and high rate divorce.
The custodial parent will no longer hide the new or current husband or boyfriend; income can
no longer disregard the courts' concealed income. No longer can she use the child support
income as a personal slush fund without any oversight. She can now face real criminal
consequences for the mismanagement of funds. The penalties faced by the custodial parent for
transgressions would be just too significant to be irresponsible.
These are recommendations that can easily be implemented by the state and the Department
of Social Services with limited interruptions to the day-to-day operations. The issues will be with
the older workers and female workers within the agency.
