Skip child support. Go to jail. Lose job. Repeat., By Frances Robles and Shaila Dewan, April 19, 2015, New York Times: “By his own telling, the first time Walter L. Scott went to jail for failure to pay child support, it sent his life into a tailspin. He lost what he called ‘the best job I ever had’ when he spent two weeks in jail. Some years he paid. More recently, he had not. Two years ago, when his debt reached nearly $8,000 and he missed a court date, a warrant was issued for his arrest. By last month, the amount had more than doubled, to just over $18,000…”
Tag: Child support
Child Support Enforcement
- How our child support system can push the poor deeper into poverty, By Jeff Guo, September 26, 2014, Washington Post: “In the United States, nearly one in four children are due some sort of child support. But only 62 percent of the money owed is actually paid. To get a sense of who these deadbeat parents are, consider this chart comparing different states…”
- Locking up parents for not paying child support can be a modern-day ‘debtor’s prison’, By Tins Griego, September 26, 2014, Washington Post: “Dwayne Ferebee, 36, father of four, has been sent to jail four times over the past 12 years on civil contempt charges for failure to pay his court-ordered child support. The first two times, he spent a couple months behind bars until his mom came up with the $3,000 the judge told him he had to pay. The third go-around, he stayed in jail six of the maximum 12-month sentence before he could scrape together the money. The fourth, he had to wait until his fiancée received her tax refund. All told, he spent about a year locked up…”
Child Support Payments
Billions of dollars in child support go unpaid yearly, By Emily Alpert Reyes, November 20, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “More than $14 billion in child support was left unpaid to American parents in a single year — more than 1 out of every 3 dollars that were due, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Wednesday. Millions of parents are awarded child support every year, but getting it is another story. Fewer than half of eligible parents received all of the child support they were due in 2011, according to a newly released report based on the Current Population Survey. About a quarter got none. Most parents were granted support through formal legal agreements established by the courts or other government entities. Yet a shrinking share of parents said they asked the government for help collecting child support.”