Deadbeat or Dead Broke

Deadbeat or Dead Broke

By Christopher Fowler

This dissertation addresses only one of many issues of the children's/parent's/father's rights issue.

Fathers have been under siege for more than thirty years. We see it in the news and on TV commercials every day.

But has anyone asked, or even wondered, why?

Some have, but most don't care. The myth of the "deadbeat dad" has been proclaimed as fact by the mothers who profit from their ex-spouses; by government agencies that gain money based on how much they collect from dads (and an exceptionally small number of moms - 16% nationally, to be precise) as well as the wide variety of private collections agencies that are contracted by child support agencies to collect child support.

The myth that non-custodial parents gain from child support after divorce is a complete and illogical lie. The issue is discussed, in depth, in this article;

The confusion comes from people that do not understand how the system works and from not understanding finances. How can a person financially gain when they are supporting themselves plus a second household?

Fathers are forced to carry 50% (reasonable to expect) to 100+% of child care expenses. In television, until very recently, has painted a picture of non-custodial fathers as irresponsible, stupid and very rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The closest media example of what it really is like to be a NCP father is closer to the "Alan Harper" model in the "Two and a Half Men" TV show.

Fathers get their visitation denied at the whim of the mother, quite frequently, do not have the finances (due to excessive child support combine with their own living expenses) to fight back;

And in the vast majority of cases, organizations, such as Legal Aid will not help due to a policy of not helping non-custodial fathers at all with child support issues, even when those issues are legitimate.

Child support agencies raise support costs on a whim as often as not, and do not notify fathers of hearings regarding increases.

Only between 3-16% of custody goes to fathers (nationwide) and only 10-15% of fathers actually try to avoid paying, while more than 80% of non-custodial mothers intentionally avoid paying and are never prosecuted for it.

Non-custodial fathers commit suicide at a rate of 15% due to the problems created by all of the above, and among that 15%, some turn first to violent crime in response to the injustice enacted against them by a system that is there to profit from the break-up of the family.

How do they profit? Simple.

1. The agencies tasked with collections have no mandate to insure that child support payments are received by and used for the child, have no mandate to insure that the mother does her part, equally.

2. Those agencies get federal funding under SSA Title IV, D which is based, exclusively on how much money they collect, not on how much that is collected is actually used for the children.

Child Support Enforcement – Child Support Enforcement and Title IV-D of the Social Security Act  

3. The agencies have no accountable obligation to actually make certain that the money that they collect even goes out. Money that never gets to the parent/child goes into a fund called the UDC (undistributed Child Support) fund. At the end of the fiscal year, that money does not return to it's source, but instead goes to the state, who uses it as it sees fit. (in 2007, the State of Florida had 9 million dollars in it's UDC fund). Money that was collected by fraud under color of law by a state and federally funded agency.

4. The state that has the highest collections in dollars gets a bonus to it's funding (in 2008 that bonus was 24 million federal dollars - your tax money used primarily to defraud hard working parents).

 US CODE: Title 42,658a. Incentive payments to States

5. While state CSE agencies are required to have a system of redress available for fathers, they often lie about having those federally mandated systems and refuse them to fathers. It does not help their bottom line when they have to reduce support payments, even after as much as a 50% reduction of total care costs.

  Why are the exceptions to the support guidelines ignored?

6. These same agencies will often go after fathers who have custody, instead of the mother that does not, to collect support payments, presuming that it must be the Father that owes.  And that issue brings up sexism in those agencies, which I will discuss in the future.

7. CSE will also go after people that could not possibly be the father of a child, just to insure their funding.

Childless man freed after serving time for child support violations - CNN.com

 Tortured for child support arrears, he didn't owe - part one

 http://victimsoflaw.net/NYFamilyCourtAbuse.htm   

The system is not functioning as it should and needs to be fixed immediately.