Posted on 09/12/2011 7:43:53 AM PDT by sinanju
It may not be a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars if you also are behind on your child-support payments.
Thousands of so-called “deadbeat” parents are jailed each year in the U.S. after failing to pay court-ordered child support — the vast majority of them for withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they’ve been unfairly gouged by the courts.
But in what might seem like an un-American plot twist from a Charles Dickens’ novel, advocates for the poor say, some parents are wrongly being locked away without any regard for their ability to pay — sometimes without the benefit of legal representation.
Randy Miller, a 39-year-old Iraqi war vet, found himself in that situation in November, when a judge in Floyd County, Ga., sent him to jail for violating a court order to pay child support.
He said he was stunned when the judge rebuffed his argument that he had made regular payments for more than a decade before losing his job in July 2009 and had recently resumed working.
“I felt that with my payment history and that I had just started working, maybe I would be able to convince the judge to give me another month had a half to start making the payments again,” he told msnbc.com. “… But that didn’t sit too well with him because he went ahead and decided to lock me up.”
Miller, who spent three months in jail before being released, is one of six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in March that seeks to force the state of Georgia to provide lawyers for poor non-custodial parents facing the loss of their freedom for failing to pay child support.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Or are more than a token number of women actually getting steamrolled by the system nowadays?
Already posted. You had the fun, pay up.
So we do have debtors prisons. I always wondered how a delinquent parent is supposed to pay when they are in jail and have no job.
Ok....so a guy loses his job and can’t make child support payments. How exactly does locking him in jail rectify the problem?
Ok....so a guy loses his job and can’t make child support payments. How exactly does locking him in jail rectify the problem?
To be consistent I suppose you would support bringing back debtor prisons?
If we want to make not paying child support a crime we should at least follow the constitution in that no one should be sent to jail without a trial.
Being sent to jail for failure to follow a court ruling when it is impossible for the individual to do so is wrong.
The burden of proof should remain on the state, not on the individual.
(I understand the reason for all this, but good intentions does not make good law. If they can send you to jail for this then they can send anyone to jail for any reason the state can think up).
I would hope that this pertains to the actual dead beats. My husband and I both have exes who owe us thousands of dollars in child support. We have six kids in the house and it’s tough to make ends meet month by month with that many kids. I work full time. My husband is deployed. I wouldn’t want either ex jailed because they are behind. I want them working! One of the exes is just an idiot who cannot keep a job to save her life. She is a deadbeat. My heart goes out to those parents who have lost jobs or who have to pay an unfair amount of support each month.
The problem with that theory is that if you truly lost your job and couldn’t pay but were married, everyone would skinny up and work together.
If it’s truly a hardship case (for real), there should be some other avenue than jail.
Randy Miller, a 39-year-old Iraqi war vet, found himself in that situation in November, when a judge in Floyd County, Ga., sent him to jail for violating a court order to pay child support.
He said he was stunned when the judge rebuffed his argument that he had made regular payments for more than a decade before losing his job in July 2009 and had recently resumed working.
What do you think happened to his new job after the judge threw him in jail? With how long it took him to get that job, do you think he might wind up BACK in jail?
I hate the deadbeats too. As a divorced father I never missed one payment. I have no sympathy for those that CAN pay but choose not to.
Title should have read: “Baby makers parents refuse to feed and care for infants and children, leaving them to die if no one else took up their care, and mad they must take responsibility.”
Simple solution: Sterilization or prison. They could still work, and pay, once sterilized.
NO parent has the option of creating children then not feeding and caring for them. At the least they should be prevented from making more. This should apply to males and females.
I do believe that breeding like alley cats would diminish greatly if this was the policy.
And, you forgot to mention.. no drivers license (revoked).. and, of course, no Passport...
What if that particular person lived in a city with no public transportation.. the job is 20+ miles away..?
I HAVE seen that happen.. and the person kept ending up in jail because he had no way to get to work, let alone find a job with no transportation because they took his driver’s license away.
It is 100% catch 22 (and 20th, 21st Century slavery).
Well, here’s a thread on which most of the comments will show a complete lack of understanding of what goes on in “family courts” and how corrupt divorce laws and their enforcement has become.
Doug Slade, a Rome attorney who represents the state Office of Child Support Services, said Miller is incarcerated for failing to comply with a court order requiring him to pay child support, with the option to serve time in a work-release center.
Randy Miller lost his job at AT&T last year and faled to pay support for his 16-year-old daughter.
The majority of inmates pick jail when given the option of serving time in jail or being allowed to find a job at a work-release center so they can make partial child support payments Slade said.
Ok....so a guy loses his job and can’t make child support payments. How exactly does locking him in jail rectify the problem?
I knew that as the man walking into that court, I was automatically guilty. We were all there to just decide my punishment. In the end it wasn’t as bad as most guys. 1/5 of my income for both girls and, cut in half when the oldest turned 18 and the ex-wife changed the girls’ last names to her maiden name. I had no say. I got to see my kids whenever I wanted to so that was nice.
Randy Miller,. Civ. Action No. 99-CV-15437C1-JFL003. (Ga. Super. ......
Randy. Miller, a 39-year-old African-American father of three and a veteran of the Iraq ...
I knew he wasn’t a white guy if the Southern Center for Human Rights and ACLU were defending him.
******
Slade said sending someone to jail is a last resort. He acknowledged that the courts have ruled that judges may not incarcerate someone on a civil contempt charge if they lack the ability to pay. But there is an exception under state law, he said, that allows judges to send inmates to work-release centers so they can work jobs during the day and sleep at the centers at night.
Slade, who has handled hundreds of child support cases, estimated that the majority of inmates pick jail when given the option of serving time in jail or being allowed to find a job at a work-release center so they can make partial child support payments. “It’s so frustrating,” he said.
http://www.subchat.com/otchat/readflat.asp?Id=727089&p=1#727260
Based on too many years doing family law, it’s virtually NEVER the first time these delinquent parents show up in court that they’re found in contempt, and change of financial circumstances is ALWAYS a valid ground for decreasing the child support obligation - even temporarily.
Sorry, we’re not getting the whole story from the dad.
This is the sort of common-sense thinking that the majority today considers "mean."
I have been in this situation from the “deadbeat” side of things. Following is my exerience....
Lost my job. Two months later I receieved papers from the state that my child support case needed to be “updated”. I went to court, told them my situation, and they gave me 3 months to come up with X amount of dollars. They didn’t say they wanted me working and paying something in 3 months, they gave me a dollar amount to bring back to court (thousands of dollars). After two months I found a job, and on the third month returned to court. As I had just started working again, I didn’t have the full amount ordered by the judge. I was sent to jail for 3 months, and lost my job.
After being released, I was given 3 months to return to court with even more money than they wanted the first time. I found another job, went back to court, and was thrown back in jail for 3 more months.
Now when I went to court, I was on my own. I was “negotiating” with a lawyer for the state, not from the state, but for, so she wasn’t on my side, she was on the states side. So I was being asked to negotiate with someone who was actively working against my interests.
After the next 3 months I was released again, but is my case resolved.....no, it’s not. I am working again, but I am not, and will not, send in the amount of money they are demanding. What they demand is more than my gross income. I have talked to them on the phone, and they suggest I find a second job, which would be awesome, if I wasn’t working 50+ hours on my first one, and if it was even possible to find a second job in this economy.
What I have decided is this....I will work, and I will pay what I can. If that is not good enough, so be it. They can send me back to jail, again and again, and will get nothing from me instead of something.
For those asking why they do the 3 month at a time thing, it’s because contempt of court is a civil violation, with a sentence of 3 months. If they wanted to sentence me to a longer term, it would go from civil into criminal, and would have to provide a lawyer.
For the record, I get along with my ex, and with my kids. My ex doesn’t work, and is on disability and welfare. That’s why the state is so interested in my income.
Have I made mistakes in my life, yes, does that mean that because I don’t earn what the state wants me to earn, I should be jailed? You tell me...
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