Deadbeat parent

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Deadbeat parent is a pejorative term [1] referring to parents who do not fulfill their parental responsibilities, especially when they evade court-ordered child support obligations or custody arrangements. They are also referred to as absentee fathers and mothers. The gender-specific deadbeat father and deadbeat mother are commonly used to refer to people who have parented a child and intentionally fail to pay child support ordered by a family law court or statutory agency such as the Child Maintenance Service.

Contents

Child support arrears

According to the United States Census Bureau, 42% of custodial mothers (as "obligees") received all child support that they were owed and 70.5% received some in 2009. Additionally, 34.1% of custodial fathers (as "obligees") received all child support that they were owed and 72.9% received some. [2]

Child support assessments are made based on a variety of formulae, and vary from state to state in the United States. According to one study 38% of Illinois "obligor" parents not paying child-support said they lacked the money to pay; 23% used non-payment to protest a lack of visitation rights; and 69% complained of no accountability over the spending of their child support money, while 13% said they did not want their child or children and 12% denied parentage, (see paternity fraud).

According to a California study, 76% of the $14.4 billion in child support arrears in California has been attributed to "obligors" who lack the ability to pay (see Figure 1, pp. 5-4). In California, the "deadbeat" parents had a median annual income of $6349, arrears of $9447, ongoing support of $300 per month. One reason given for this was that 71% of the orders were set by default—meaning that person who supposedly owes support was not personally served with a notice to appear before the court or administrative agency. A notice is sent to the last known address, which may have changed. [3]

Alternative terms for deadbeat parents who lack the ability to pay are "deadbroke" [4] [5] and "turnip" (as in "you can't get blood out of a turnip"). [6]

Child support enforcement in the United States

Legislation

The U.S. law known as the Bradley Amendment was passed in 1986 to automatically trigger a non-expiring lien whenever child support becomes overdue.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, 42 U.S.C. 653a, established in 1997 a New Hire Registry in which all employers in the United States, private or public, State and Federal, must report all newly hired employees within 20 days or less depending on how they report. The report includes name, address and Social Security number of each new employee. States are required to match reports of newly hired employees against social security numbers of persons having outstanding child support orders, and to issue an order to the employer to withhold and forward unpaid child support payments.

Many U.S. states have passed laws that allows the Department of Public Safety in the state to use its information to find the non-compliant parent and call them to account for their actions.

There are now many collections-oriented sites on the Internet that mention or highlight deadbeat parents, some even showing mug shots and marking the photos as "found" in the style of the FBI's "most wanted" list. [7] [8]

Action taken against defaulting parents

In the United States, persons in arrears for child support payments are potentially subject to incarceration. Other penalties for child-support non-payment also exist. Many U.S. states suspend an individual's licenses (i.e. driver's license, business license, contractor license) if that individual has significant arrearage in support payments or does not consistently pay support. This authority does not extend to professionals who receive licensure through non-governmental agencies. In 2000, the state of Tennessee revoked the driver's licenses of 1,372 people who collectively owed more than $13 million USD in child support. [9] In Texas non-custodial parents behind more than three months in child-support payments can have court-ordered payments deducted from their wages, can have federal income tax refund checks, lottery winnings, or other money that may be due from state or federal sources intercepted by child support enforcement agencies, can have licenses (including hunting and fishing licenses) suspended, and a judge may sentence a nonpaying parent to jail and enter a judgment for past due child support. [10] However, on 4 September 1998, the Supreme Court of Alaska upheld a law allowing state agencies to revoke driver's licenses of parents seriously delinquent in child support obligations. [11] And in the case of United States of America v. Rosen, U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Cir., 1996), the court upheld the constitutionality of a law allowing federal fines and up to two years imprisonment for a person willfully failing to pay more than $5,000 in child support over a year or more when said child resides in a different state from that of the non-custodial parent.[ citation needed ]

Socially, deadbeat parents risk motivating their children to violate filial responsibility laws when they are grown.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

Child custody, conservatorship and guardianship describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and the parent's child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.

Child support is an ongoing, periodic payment made by a parent for the financial benefit of a child following the end of a marriage or other similar relationship. Child maintenance is paid directly or indirectly by an obligor to an obligee for the care and support of children of a relationship that has been terminated, or in some cases never existed. Often the obligor is a non-custodial parent. The obligee is typically a custodial parent, a caregiver, or a guardian.

Paternity law refers to body of law underlying legal relationship between a father and his biological or adopted children and deals with the rights and obligations of both the father and the child to each other as well as to others. A child's paternity may be relevant in relation to issues of legitimacy, inheritance and rights to a putative father's title or surname, as well as the biological father's rights to child custody in the case of separation or divorce and obligations for child support.

The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mothers—either after divorce or marital separation. The movement includes men as well as women, often the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of men who have had some engagement with family law. Most Fathers' rights advocates argue for formal gender equality.

In United States law, the Bradley Amendment is an amendment intended to improve the effectiveness of child support enforcement. It is named after Senator Bill Bradley, who introduced it.

Child custody is a legal term regarding guardianship which is used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent or guardian and a child in that person's care. Child custody consists of legal custody, which is the right to make decisions about the child, and physical custody, which is the right and duty to house, provide and care for the child. Married parents normally have joint legal and physical custody of their children. Decisions about child custody typically arise in proceedings involving divorce, annulment, separation, adoption or parental death. In most jurisdictions child custody is determined in accordance with the best interests of the child standard.

Paternity fraud is one form of misattributed paternity or paternal discrepancy. Specifically, paternity fraud is the intentional misidentification of a child's biological father. Paternity fraud is distinct from other, unintentional misattribution, which may arise from simple error, an accident such as a mix-up during fertility treatment, or a sexual assault.

An income shares formula is used by many states to establish the child support amount of each child rather than what it actually costs to raise a child. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, In income share model, both parents responsible for the children for contributing financially to the children. Income shares tables calculating child support are not based directly on actual spending on children but rather on indirect estimates of child costs. Income shares model depend on that a child receive the same proportion of parental income and also it assumes that child costs reflect the spending necessary to restore a family's standard of living back to what it was prior to the divorce or having a child. It is very reasonable for the children who their parents divorced. It is consistent with the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act. This technique was first developed in the 19th century to answer economic questions among different family types, but was never intended to measure the cost of rearing children. The purpose of the income shares- child support lead to more fair and regular fundamental child support awards. Also, governments should regard different political balances that are equality and transparency.

In the United States, child support is the ongoing obligation for a periodic payment made directly or indirectly by an "obligor" to an "obligee" for the financial care and support of children of a relationship or a marriage. The laws governing this kind of obligation vary dramatically state-by-state and tribe-by-tribe among Native Americans. Each individual state and federally recognized tribe is responsible for developing its own guidelines for determining child support.

The fathers' rights movement in the United States is a group that provides fathers with education, support and advocacy on family law issues of child custody, access, child support, domestic violence and child abuse. Members protest what they see as evidence of gender bias against fathers in the branches and departments of various governments, including the family courts.

The fathers' rights movement in Australia focus on issues of erosion of the family unit, child custody, shared parenting, child access, child support, domestic violence against men, false allegations of domestic violence, child abuse, the reintroduction of fault into divorce proceedings, gender bias, the adversarial family court system and secrecy issues.

This article includes information about the child support policies of several countries.

A tax refund interception, also referred to as a tax refund offset, is the act of an agency responsible for sending tax refunds using all or part of a refund to fulfill an obligation of the taxpayer rather than sending the money to the taxpayer him/herself.

A noncustodial parent is a parent who does not have physical custody of his or her minor child as the result of a court order. When the child lives with only one parent, in a sole custody arrangement, then the parent with which the child lives is the custodial parent while the other parent is the non-custodial parent. The non-custodial parent may have contact or visitation rights. In a shared parenting arrangement, where the child lives an equal or approximately equal amount of time with the mother and father, both are custodial parents and neither is a non-custodial parent.

Each U.S. state is responsible for developing a child support enforcement program that complies with federal requirements, including a guidelines method of calculating child support. At minimum, 45 C.F.R. 302.56 requires each state to establish and publish a guideline that is presumptively correct, and review the guideline, at a minimum, every four years.

42 U.S.C. § 652(k) is a United States law which sometimes requires the denial or revocation of passports for individuals who fail to pay child support. The law was enacted as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996.

The Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) is a state agency of Missouri. It has its headquarters in the Broadway State Office Building in Jefferson City. The department operates the state's social services.

Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011), is a case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 20, 2011, relating to the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court held that Turner was not entitled to a public defender in cases regarding family nonsupport. However, in cases in which a state is not required to provide counsel, it must provide some other safeguard to reduce the risk of erroneous deprivation of liberty in civil contempt cases. The particular case the Court took under review was a child support payment case and the point of contention was the process of the defendant's income determination by the court.

The Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) is a United States government office responsible for overseeing the U.S. child support program. Child support is the obligation on parents to provide financial support for their children. OCSS was established with the Federal Government’s enactment of Child Support Enforcement and Paternity Establishment Program (CSE) in 1975, which was enacted to reduce welfare expenses by collecting child support from non-custodial parents.

The laws governing child support in Israel can be tried under either civil courts or religious courts. Jewish, Muslim, Druze and Christian courts are officially recognised by the Israeli state as having jurisdiction over family matters, if a case is first filed in those courts. Secular courts have jurisdiction if a case is first filed with them.

References

  1. ↑ "De-racializing "Deadbeat Dads:" Paternal Involvement in MTV's Teen Mom Samuel Jay / University of Denver – Flow". flowtv.org. 24 September 2010.
  2. ↑ "Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2009" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  3. ↑ Dr. Sorensen, Elaine; Dr. Heather Koball; Kate Pomper; Chava Zibman (March 2003). "Examining Child Support Arrears in California: The Collectibility Study" (PDF). California Department of Child Support Services. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 June 2015. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  4. ↑ "Deadbroke dads". Sacramento News & Review. 11 October 2007. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  5. ↑ Sperling, Gene. The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, p. 158 (Simon and Schuster, 2005), ISBN   978-0-7432-9241-2
  6. ↑ Totenberg, Nina (23 March 2011). "Supreme Court Weighs Rights Of 'Deadbeat' Parents". Morning Edition . NPR . Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  7. ↑ "Dodge County advises that these parents are being sought for not paying child support". Archived from the original on 9 May 2013.
  8. ↑ Indiana Department of Child Services. "MOST WANTED CHILD SUPPORT EVADERS".
  9. ↑ "Child_sup_revoke". www.state.tn.us. Archived from the original on 24 September 2005.
  10. ↑ "Texas Attorney General". www.oag.state.tx.us. Archived from the original on 1 September 2005.
  11. ↑ National Conference of State Legislatures. "404". webarchive.loc.gov. Archived from the original on 10 August 2009.{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)

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