Posted on 06/16/2010 8:59:20 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Despite being locked up before for ignoring orders to pay child support, Luna had managed to come up with only $13.11 for his two children during the past year. He mumbled that he couldnt give more, that he didnt have a job and that he lived with his parents.
In Bexar County, parents like Luna who miss child support payments are far more likely to get jail time than in Texas four other largest urban counties.
Last fiscal year, 1,013 parents were held in Bexar County Jail for failing to pay child support, according to figures from the Texas attorney generals office.
Thats more than five times the number of deadbeat parents jailed in Dallas, Harris, Tarrant or Travis counties. Those four counties combined sent 631 people to jail last fiscal year for owing child support.
So far this year, deadbeat parents have taken up an average of 161 beds per week at the jail the same number that Harris County jailed all last year.
The vast discrepancy reflects a tougher-than-average philosophy in Bexar County in which parents who owe child support more often are summoned to court, judicial officials said. Usually, theyll stay in jail for a few days or weeks to teach them a lesson or until they come up with some money.
In two days, your namesake is going to turn 10. Thats a pretty big day for him, Rausch barked at Luna, ordering him back to jail until he could make a $2,000 lump-sum payment. A week later is Fathers Day, and youre going to be in jail for both of those. I dont think it matters to you.
After Lunas hearing, Rausch said fathers who dont have relationships with their children often need to be threatened with jail to get their attention.
The intact family is disappearing, he said. There are good fathers out there, but the numbers are going in the wrong direction.
This court has taken a very firm, tough approach to fathers and mothers who dont pay child support. I feel very comfortable and confident were handling it the right way.
Not everyone, however, agrees.
Its counterproductive to me, and it just doesnt make a lot of sense, County Judge Nelson Wolff said.
It costs the county $60 a day to house a prisoner in Bexar County Jail, which often is overcrowded, he said. That equates to $2.7 million taxpayers must pay each year to incarcerate the parents, he estimated.
Hand in hand with the cost is the problem of jail overcrowding.
I think there has to be a better way to do it, Wolff said.
In Bexar County, fathers or mothers whom the Texas attorney general has targeted as in arrears on payments usually arent brought into court unless they have been delinquent for months or years.
Once at Bexar County Courthouse, many work out deals with prosecutors or the other parent on the spot. If the case remains unresolved and a judge finds a defendant at fault, he or she may be put on probation or sent to jail until a lump sum can be paid.
Even if released, those found at fault frequently are summoned back for updates on their payment status. The intensive release-and-reset strategy can result in more people being jailed, judges said.
A parent could be jailed up to six times in a year for missing payments or failing to appear in court, Bexar County officials say.
The countys use of flash incarcerations may be different from other counties, where jail time is viewed more as a last resort, University of Texas family law Professor John Sampson said.
That appears to be the case in Dallas County, which has roughly the same number of child support cases as the San Antonio area, but far fewer people being sent to jail.
Both counties collected similar amounts of child support payments between $262 million and $265 million last fiscal year. Dallas, however, sent 160 deadbeat parents to jail.
I guess its a carrot-stick approach, said Judge George Collins, who oversees one of Dallas four child support courts. When you cant seem to encourage them anymore, you lock them up.
Were not big on putting them in jail. Were big on collecting money.
San Antonio attorney Lisa Dossmann has seen the differences in judicial philosophies firsthand, having worked for child support offices with the attorney general in Dallas and Bexar counties before going into private practice a decade ago.
On her first day in Rauschs court after transferring from Dallas, the case she was prosecuting resulted in jail time.
I was stunned, she said. In Dallas, they gave them a lot more time to come up with the money.
Like other attorneys and judges interviewed for this report, she sided with both of Bexar Countys child support judges, even though shes now a defense attorney.
I think its a fair approach, she said, explaining that her clients rarely end up in jail because she warns them of the consequences. If the client comes up with some kind of lump sum, even if its a low amount, the judge isnt going to incarcerate them.
And when they do refuse to pay, incarceration often will spur family members to chip in to make a payment so the defendant can be released quickly, she said.
Although Bexar Countys system is different from other counties in Texas, it does seem to be effective, said Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the attorney generals Child Support Division.
It is a program that (prosecutors) are very pleased with, she said.
But with a child support collection rate on par with Dallas County, Bexar Countys judicial philosophy doesnt make sense, Wolff said. Once a person is in jail, hell lose his job or cant look for work.
It just doesnt add up, he said. Obviously, all of the other counties have come to the same conclusion except for us. ..... Youre putting them in there with the criminal element. ..... Jail should be for the protection of the public.
Wolff said he has been critical of the incarceration rate for most of his political career with the county. But its the elected district court judges who hire the child support court judges, and so his griping has had little effect, he lamented.
Senior state District Judge David Peeples sees a parallel between getting a child to obey and making a parent pay child support. Like the threat of spanking, incarceration can persuade a parent to follow court orders.
You need that possibility of going to jail hanging in the background, he said.
Peeples, who oversees the two child support courts in Bexar County and nearly two dozen in the region, knew the incarceration rate was disproportionately high in Bexar but was unaware of how high.
Peeples speculated that could be somewhat reflective of Bexar Countys low-income population, and judges vigilance in pursuing low-income defendants who might slip under the radar in other jurisdictions.
It might not be as lucrative going after a deadbeat parent whos poor, and it might not add a lot to the total collections tally, but the money collected even if a smaller amount is significant to the other parent struggling to raise the children, Peeples said.
Still, he said, the numbers need to be carefully examined.
If were not getting any more bang for our buck, youd wonder why we do it, he said.
Peeples also joined other judges, such as Delia Carian, Bexar Countys other support court judge, and Harris County child support Judge Gregory Wettman, in voicing skepticism that the incarceration statistics have been submitted the same way by each county.
Ive got to believe theyre just counting it different, Wettman said.
Carian, who has been on the child support bench in Bexar County for three years, admits she and Rausch are tough. But she never thought of that as an anomaly.
To me, it seems like everybody has the same position, she said.
Representatives with the attorney generals office said the agency is reviewing the numbers, but so far no reporting discrepancies have been found.
Inside Rauschs and Carians court chambers are lists of every defendant in jail for owing child support. The files are revisited weekly.
While fathers like Luna theoretically could stay in jail indefinitely if the ordered amount isnt paid, chances are the most hopeless cases will result in releases from jail after a few days or weeks, Rausch said.
The released prisoners then will be brought back to court months later to see if their attitudes have changed, he said.
Over the course of two days in the first week of June, Rausch ordered 48 people released about five of whom paid the demanded amount.
Im sympathetic with the jail population issue, said Rausch, who has been on the bench for nearly 22 years and serves on the National Judicial Child Support Task Force.
It does no good to put someone in jail and intend for them to stay there and serve out that sentence, he said. Im hoping their time in jail taught them a lesson.
At the very least, he said, it gets the attention of other parents waiting in the courtroom most of whom wont end up in jail.
On a recent day this month, prosecutors in Rauschs court collected $15,000 in back payments for children whod previously been neglected.
Rausch, who said he had a great relationship with his own father, finds it frustrating to see parents neglecting the needs of their children. He has seen scores of children cry in his office because of an absent parent. While he cant force parents to have relationships with their children, he does have the tools to make sure they support them, he said.
Were tough very tough, he said. My bedrock philosophy is, if youre going to bring a child into this world, you have to support that child. The court system is the only entity that can enforce that.
And if that means jailing parents, so be it.
If you place significance on a parents obligation to support the child, I dont see where there can be any other approach, he said.
Where does the Constitution say that? Or is it in one of the penumbras?
free access to the courts? good luck!
ever check out the courts hours? they start later than the typical work day begins, and ends earlier- makes it really hard for those of us that WORK to get in touch with anyone.
heck, my worker only accepts calls one day a week, for three hours in the afternoon. i’ve never been able to get in touch with her- even when i take time off or take a late lunch. the ex.. they talk weekly.
“Here’s a clue ladies, if you want your child’s father involved in your child’s life and paying for that child, perhaps you should be a bit more discerning in selecting the men you bed.”
Worth repeating.
Good men are out there. But most women would rather opt for the bad boy because they are the easy ones, only finding out that the bad boy didn’t get his reputation for nothing.
And the woman is ALWAYS going to be THE one to change him. /s
That wasnt your point at all. Your post made no mention of them being deadbeats. But I guess if you find men who lost their jobs and cant pay support low-lifes, it says more about you than it does about anyone else.
You said the overwhelming % of deadbeat parents were fathers. I said you are using the wrong statistics.
Imagine there are 1,000 fathers who owe child support, and 10% dont pay. That is 100 non-payers.
Now, imagine there are only 50 mothers who owe child support, and 10% dont pay. That is 5 non-payers.
Both populations have 10 percent not paying, but if you take non-paying fathers as a percentage of total non-payers, then it looks like 95.2% of non-payers are fathers. That is just due to the fathers who owe sample size being much larger, nothing to do with gender.
In fact, if 100% of the women in the above did not pay, and 10% of the men did not pay, the fathers would still be 66% of the non-payers.
The only thing Im pointing out is your lack of a grasp of statistical analysis, sorry if that hits one of your nerves :)
Exactly. Why can’t they just reduce the arrears to judgment and get a judgment lien, a writ of execution, and/or wage garnishment - the same tools you use to collect on any other court-ordered payment of money.
But no - the “deadbeat dads” issue is one of those legal issues where reason always seems to take a back seat to emotion. The existence of specialized child support courts only exacerbates this.
You’re telling me what my point was? That’s rich. Deadbeat dads (and no, I am not one nor was my father) are low lifes, regardless of the marital drama. If the shoe fits wear it.
Yet another good reason NOT to get married. Remember, nobody has ever gotten divorced without first getting married.
So, essentially their approach to debt collection is to hold the man hostage in order to extort money from their families.
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Hey, it works. See post 55
(Not saying I like or don’t like, mind you....)
Remember, nobody has ever gotten divorced without first getting married.
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I know what you mean, but remember also, getting married is not a prerequisite to having kids.
Plenty of nimrods in family courts are fighting support and custody battles, yet they never said their vows.
Im telling you that the point you made is not the point you think you made. You did not say that anywhere in your post, only some half assed statistic.
But good job in completely ignoring what I wrote and not responding to a point that is based in fact. Have fun being a reactional emotional progressive who fudges statistics to make yourself feel better.
I’m sure it does work - though the numbers in the chart suggest that it isn’t really any more effective at collecting money than not putting them in jail.
It’s probably more emotionally satisfying to the judge, the other spouse, and some members of the voting public, though, and I suspect that’s the point.
It’s a “penumbra” under Equal Protection from a SCOTUS case in 1970 I think - forget the name of the case. But it’s a pretty well reasoned one with a lot of support in our founding docs.
The X insisted that the divorce agreement include the saving of 2% of our incomes for college expenses. When the time was close (a few years ago) her sugar-daddy had just been wiped out in the stock market but, to her credit, she managed to come up with her share. So long as she was close I wasn’t going to make it ugly, despite her having done so in the past over relatively trivial matters.
I had well over the required amount.
Like I said, she has nothing over me anymore. She took me to mediation 3 times (I won twice) and she is welcome to try again. I’d enjoy it.
The system is out of balance - it’s favoring women over men - that’s not good for anyone.
You hit the nail on the head!
That's another part of the issue. Courts and lawyers look at it as a money-making proposition and claim that it's "for the children". The amount they skim off the top to cover their bureaucracy can be astounding.
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