jfulcher

Hell yes their DLs should be suspended! Your rights should be nill until you fulfill your obligations to your OWN CHILD! As I said earlier I honestly think those people should be in jail.

jfulcher

CC payments and parking tickets are items which hurt no one but a big company. Deadbeats not making their child support payments ultimately hurt someone who has potentially no other means.

It doesn't matter what legal proceedings are going on - you should always pay your child support until the court tells you it is not required any more. They should have never gotten behind in the first place.

fwh

"They should have never gotten behind in the first place"

Now when I think of my buddy who got screwed over by the court and his ex-wife despite not having biological children and being the victim of paternity fraud, your statement really makes my blood boil.

If the system was 100% clean and perfect, your statement would be valid.

Superguy

So take everything away so they can't catch up or meet their obligations. Real smart.

GUWonder

About pulling passports for unpaid parking tickets and unpaid credit card bills, those unpaid items too are said to harm the public in small and large ways. Perhaps that harm too could be used to justify why in some countries it is the government that plays the role of debt collector even for private sector debt claims made by one party.

Counterproductive suggestions are often the result of emotionalism. While this is true in and out of government it's more problematic when politicians play up to the emotional mob.

As long as a citizen is free to move about within the country I see no reason why that free citizen ought to be impeded from easily moving about the world as well -- if fine by foot, then fine also by car, bus, train, and plane even if it involves international travel.

fwh

There's a thread in OMNI/PR talking about a "deadbeat dad" who was jailed for not paying child support for a kid that was not his.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni-...ses-child.html

GUWonder

He'd be prevented from getting a US passport, but even if having a US passport a passport wouldn't do the jailed person much good.

I wonder what the "think of the children" lobby thinks about non-jailed US citizens who hold or are entitled to passports from other countries. I can see that lobby being very must be disappointed or at least being big supporters of Fortress-Prison America policies (e.g., advocating for US government blacklists and law enforcement dragnets at airports which even affect citizens whose movements have not been restricted as part of a court's sentencing in a criminal matter).

n4zhg

Problem is, child support fraud is a larger issue than you might imagine, particularly with the power of the omnipotent state behind it. Most family courts take the attitude of "if you're a man, you automatically wrong" and that is not the way things are supposed to be.

I recall one man in either Arizona or New Mexico that ended up paying child support for a nonexistent child for four years. The only reason why it stopped was the woman actually kidnapped a child to present to the judge. And this was after the director of the state office put on letterhead "this child exists, you know it, so STFU and pay your support, deadbeat."

The woman ended up in jail, all the state employees involved have successfully hidden behind qualified immunity. The entire system is biased against men, even if the man is the custodial parent.

DillMan

Ok, so making people pay child support isn't a bad thing. I'm all for it. What I'm against is a slippery slope. Now that we've started tossing things like due process and certain civil rights out the window because we so strongly support the result of doing so (and it doesn't affect us....at least not now), we've set a dangerous precedent.

Fast Food is bad too. Are you going to be mad when you can't get a passport because you've used up all your high-fat ration cards for the last 12 months?

Racism is bad too. Are you going to be mad when you can't renew your DL because you were overheard making a potentially racist remark in line at the bank last week?

The list goes on and on. Giving something up in the name of something so good....so right.....so wonderful means that you've given politicians the ability to make you give up that right again and again in the future. Politics change. They always have and always will. That means when you give that right up today because the end result punishes people you despise so much; you might just find yourself on the other end of that transaction in the future when you are seen as the one to despise.

The extensive rights everyone has in our country were thought out for a reason. We even have extensive rights for wrongdoers. The people who came up with these rules for a reason; a very good reason in my opinion.

Rights DO NOT bend. They are either left alone or they break. Period.

Cha-cha-cha

I have to agree that there's a slippery slope concern.

1. Should passports be denied to persons who are delinquent in paying their child support?
2. Should passports be denied to persons who are delinquent in paying their state or federal income taxes?
3. Should passports be denied to persons who are delinquent in paying their student loans?
4. Should passports be denied to persons who are delinquent in paying their traffic and parking tickets?
5. Should passports be denied to persons who have outstanding warrants?

If we answer yes to 1, it's hard to see why we should answer no to the others. The argument that 1 is so much more important than the others as to be "different" is a matter of opinion and so a weak one: people who think the other reasons are also "important" can use the child support example to argue for making these other rules too. Do we really want to erode the right to have a passport by making all those checks?

It seems to me there's also a serious due process issue. Americans have a right to travel out of the country. Do we really want that right taken away, not by a court, but purely by an administrative process of the State Department? If I understand the program, passports are denied to people just because their names are on a state's list of child support non-payers, not because there's a court verdict saying they've broken a law.

Loren Pechtel

Or what happened to a co-worker:

His ex had custody. She wanted more money so she applied for welfare, neglecting to mention the child support she was getting. Proving that she had lied and he was making the child support payments wasn't enough to satisfy the state.


When scum are involved there is nothing resembling justice in child support matters.

PoliceStateSurvivor

This is why like the idea of income withholding. Paycheck stubs, together with a testimony from the employer (if necessary), should be enough of a proof.

Worked for me once when the State where my ex lived decied to double-dip and get a second order in California to get more money.

IslandBased

Read Alec Baldwin's book- A Promise to Ourselves.
Or, "How to spend $1,200,000 on a divorce and come to the conclusion that mediation might have been better".

Loren Pechtel

The state accepted that he had been paying the child support. They didn't care, it would have cost more to fight it in court (and more than he had) than the money they wanted.

elusive1

The problem is if the amount is incorrect, there is no way to get off the list. Only the child support agency that placed you on the list can take you off. While there is technically a long list of exceptions, realistically no agency will ever take you off unless you pay what the "claim" is owed.

Often, these are multi-state situations. I have a buddy who has been blocked by California in this "Passport Denial" program. California claims he owes $244,000. (even California admits its about $23,000 in principal plus penalties and interest) He actually owes $23,000, and has a court order from Nevada stating so.It was some mess where he had multiple ex's from different states, one of whom went on welfare and moved state to state, all three states billed him, with penalties over many years. His kids are all adults now.

He is at a loss how to go forward, immigration lawyers dont want to deal with it because of the child support issue and family lawyers don't want to deal with it as they have no experience on the passport issue.

Anyone have any advice or an idea of what type of lawyer would handle this?