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Your mother moved to Tuscon, which is in Arizona and why your father looked at AZ laws apparently, but you say no one lived there. See how confusing it gets; and that's not half the problem.

I thought the chronology was pretty clear, at the time of the divorce no one in the family lived in AZ, later we moved here.

There was no federal child support enforcement bureacracy back in them olden days, but there was child support enforcement. Judges could do all sorts of things to get the money and throw people in jail for "contempt of court" (not doing what they were ordered) if appropriate.

Not in CA. In CA all they would do is send a letter and then ONLY if you provided them with the address of the deadbeat. But since we weren't in CA the CA courts didn't want to work with us, we had to work with an AZ judge and get him to work with a CA judge and by the time that happened dear old dad had moved leaving no forwarding address, sorry no letter.

One of the things I do know about the current enforcement system is that the damaging effects are mostly carried out against the innocent.

You'll have to explain how a person can decide to no longer pay child support for their own kids and still be innocent.

It's all about money you see, not justice. It's not about money for children -- fer kryin' out loud, it's not really for "child support."

It is about the money. The money these people are supposed to be giving for the rearing of their children.

It's about the money that states get from the federal government for running child support enforcement programs. It's about money that judges and district attorneys and private collection businesses get from higher "collections."

Of course if the father actually paid their child support in the first place there wouldn't be this cottage industry.

It's about all that dough lawyers get from angry fathers trying to get the amount set to something reasonable. It's not about child support.

Yeah my dad spend a lot of money on lawyers to get his child support reduced by $25, and my mom spent a lot to keep it at the level he had agreed to in the first place. Probably if you do the math both sides spent more on lawyers than it was worth. But people in divorces feel this need to win all the time and the math frequently doesn't enter in to it.

The way all those other people maximized their profit wasn't by going after $100 that somebody doesn't have, or going after some low or low-middle income guy who's giving it everything he's got to beat the system. That strategy costs a lot of money and returns very little. Besides, if the mother and children really need money they can get it from the welfare system.

I see so it's OK for the fed gov to get involved, just not in a way that hassles you. The mothers can go on welfare, but actually expect someone to get their deadbeat ex to actually pay his child support is going too far.

They arbitrarily increased the amount of awards and "collected" primarily from middle and upper income dads who pay regularly anyway for primarily middle and upper income mothers. The take increases because everything that's paid, the vast majority paid without any problem whatsoever, is classified as "collections" and everybody gets a cut.

You'll need to provide some real world example here. This makes no sense, how can they nail someone for non-payment if they've been paying?

Aside from the fact that the arbitrarily high awards were generally destroying lives, it just got worse for anyone who lost their job or even those who worked fewer overtime hours one year than the year before. "There's no excuse for not paying child support," the politicians would say, and watched the inappropriately high debt pile up knowing that the father couldn't do anything about it; but it increased profits.

I know that the compliance rate (i.e. the percent of what is ordered that is paid each year) has not risen since the federal government got involved in enforcement. In fact, it fell after 1996 even during a period when the economy was strong. I know that for the most part the historical record of payment of child support by fathers was quite high, and strongly correlated with employment and income.

But it's not 100%. Until it's 100% there's a problem in this country.

So you see, if I had to use my statistical knowledge to come to some conclusion about your father (this procedure is scientifically unacceptable), I'd say that either he did pay and you didn't hear about it or he couldn't. Even if I'm wrong about that, I'm confident that I'm right about this; do away with FEDERAL involvement in child support enforcement (especially federal funding with funny conditions attached) and the world will be a better place.

Thanks for showing what an ass you are. If my father was paying then why is it I've never seen him since the end of 1980? Part of the agreement was visitation. And I have serious doubts that he couldn't pay for 6 1/2 years. The guy was in a high paying environment after all (computer programmer, big company, did outings to the Rose Bowl, as I said dear old dad had season tickets to both the Angels and the Rams and was working on Lakers tickets last I saw him, couldn't pay isn't very likely), unless he was dead but another part of the settlement said he was supposed to have a $10,000 life insurance policy with me as the payee so if he died I would have gotten some money there. As for things being better without federal involvement I don't think so. One of the big problems we faced was trying to work across state lines, AZ didn't have jurisdiction on dad and CA didn't ave jurisdiction on us, so we had to get the AZ courts to work with the CA courts. The nice part about federal involvement is you avoid that mess. Maybe the fed should handle it differently than they do, but given what a nightmare the situation was before removing the fed would clearly NOT make things better.

The other thing I might mention, just in case your mother was receiving welfare, is that child support payments would have gone to the government and not your mother. He could have been paying but your mother wouldn't have known.

We wound up receiving welfare when he stopped paying, but it was less than his child support payments ($90/ month vs his $125), and we got off welfare in about 18 months. And again you're comparing now to then, then AZ wouldn't touch this kind of stuff, one of the big hurdles we had was just proving that he wasn't paying anymore.

There's this huge gap in scientific studies that collect data by survey between what mothers say fathers pay and what fathers say fathers pay that seemed to be a bit of a mystery for a while -- until I realized that much of the difference is the child support that fathers pay to the government that mothers don't know about -- it's not paid to them and they don't get info from the gov on that.

But by the time the government has stepped in dear old dad has already failed to pay. Probably what he's paying to the government includes arears. As for our situation I saw the checks while he was paying, there'd sometimes be notes in there, and that's where the travel arangements came from. I know he paid $125, until he decided to stop.

There are deadbeat dads, not all of the wishing in the world will end that. Until the fed stepped in enforcing child support was nearly impossible, if both parents were in the same state and that state had some good laws it got easier but outside of that forget it. While the fed's solution is probably not the best, pretending there isn't and never was a problem is no better.

Here's an area where we're in agreement, which I've said multiple time on this thread. It's interesting how I'm willing to admit that some dads are forced into a bad situation by insane courts but you have yet to admit that there are actual deadbeat dads. Come on, give it a shot, it's not that hard. Out here in the real world, away from your precious research, some people are no good and don't miraculously become good just because they got some woman pregnant.

OK, let's get that out of the way. There are "deadbeat dads." I did some non-trivial research to find out. First, I had to figure out what the term means. I kept careful track of television commentary and political rhetoric on the topic until I got it defined. Then I went to the statistics to estimate how many "deadbeat dads" there are out in the real world. My estimate is that they make up less than one percent (1%) of the total population of non-custodial parents. Somewhere around a half percent probably. So, on the basis of probability, it was reasonable of me to suggest that your father might not fit the definition. I'm sorry that you haven't seen him in such a long time. One more thing you might find interesting; back in the olden days many fathers stayed away because the common wisdom of the day for divorced parents was that conflict between the parents was too hard on the children, while common wisdom for married couples was to stay together for the sake of the children. Go figer.

But since we weren't in CA the CA courts didn't want to work with us, we had to work with an AZ judge and get him to work with a CA judge and by the time that happened dear old dad had moved leaving no forwarding address, sorry no letter. It's beginning to sound a bit like your father was not a wealthy man with a stable job. But once again, I don't discuss personal situations with strangers on the internet, so I'm not asking.

You'll have to explain how a person can decide to no longer pay child support for their own kids and still be innocent. It is about the money. The money these people are supposed to be giving for the rearing of their children. You'll need to provide some real world example here. This makes no sense, how can they nail someone for non-payment if they've been paying? I see so it's OK for the fed gov to get involved, just not in a way that hassles you. The mothers can go on welfare, but actually expect someone to get their deadbeat ex to actually pay his child support is going too far. Of course if the father actually paid their child support in the first place there wouldn't be this cottage industry.

Some of your responses gave me the impression that you think I've been describing things the way I want them to be. You misinterpreted my responses. You're shooting at the messenger.

I thought I was very clear with the explanation I gave in my last post, but I could tell from your responses that you didn't get it. That's ok, because the system is weird. It's designed to do strange things that nobody expects it should be doing. It won't make any sense to you until you realize that it's designed for corruption. Then, you'll get it. It's a scam. Your anger at fathers who don't pay is misdirected by putting it into support for this system. It's not designed to do what you think it's designed to do or what you want it to do. It's not designed to do what the public was told it's supposed to be doing.

Your assumption is that the government and the bureacracy and the private collectors are "going after" people who don't pay. They might do a bit of that now and again, and do send threatening notes to people when they have their addresses, etc. But they make the big bucks from people who do pay. They make life difficult to impossible for all non-custodial fathers, including those who do pay. They "nail" people who pay. That's how the industry works. They make money from money flowing through the system. The most profitable thing to do is to "go after" those with money and no history of payment problems -- fathers who would pay whether the enforcement system exists or not; so they set up the system to "collect" from those guys without having to go to much effort to "collect." Then they dramatically increased the amount ordered in order to increase their profits.

But it's not 100%. Until it's 100% there's a problem in this country. While the fed's solution is probably not the best, pretending there isn't and never was a problem is no better

Well, ah. It's never been 100% of course and it never will be. It would be better to wait until everyone everywhere has perfect health, perfect employment, constant love and harmony, and no practical problems of any kind before going for 100% on thsi deal. Until then, it's not going to be 100%. Using the lack of perfection as an excuse for "public-private partnerships" between a corrupt government and organized crime is awefully weak.