Rule could leave child-support debtors no income, By Daniel Wagner (AP), February 27, 2012, Detroit News: ” Old child support debts could cost thousands of poor men their only income next year because of a policy aimed at reducing the cost to the government of mailing paper checks to pay federal benefits. The Treasury Department will start paying benefits electronically next March. It will stop issuing the paper checks that many people rely on to safeguard a portion of their benefits from states trying to collect back child support. States can freeze the bank accounts of people who owe child support. A separate Treasury Department rule, in place since last May in a preliminary form, guarantees them the power to freeze Social Security, disability and veterans’ benefits that have been deposited into those accounts. Once paper checks are eliminated, about 275,000 people could lose access to all of their income, advocates say…”
Tag: Child support
Child Support Formula – Illinois
Illinois may alter child support formula, By Bill Ruthhart, December 30, 2011, Chicago Tribune: “State officials for the first time in decades are pushing a major overhaul of a system that touches one of the most volatile of all family issues: how child support is calculated. The move aims at making the process fairer by considering both parents’ incomes and time spent with the child, but some advocates already are arguing to change – or scrap – the new proposal, which won’t be finalized until next spring. If Illinois switches the calculation, it would join 38 other states that already have adopted versions of what’s known as the ‘income shares’ formula…”
Incarceration for Child Support Debt – Georgia
Judge allows thousands to join child support lawsuit, By Bill Rankin, January 3, 2012, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Thousands of parents facing possible jail time for failing to pay child support can join a lawsuit that says lawyers should be appointed to represent them if unable to afford counsel, a judge has ruled. In a Dec. 30 order, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter granted class-action status to a suit filed last year against the state by five parents who had been jailed for child-support debt. Georgia is one of the few states nationwide that does not provide lawyers for indigent parents facing civil contempt in child-support proceedings. The state already struggles, because of budget shortfalls, to provide lawyers to indigent people charged with criminal offenses. The lawsuit contends Georgia is creating modern-day debtor’s prisons for those jailed when they have no ability to pay because they have lost jobs or are disabled and unable to find work…”