In my years as a Family law and trial attorney, I have seen every kind of effort by non-paying parents to avoid supporting a child. Sometimes these folks deserve to be sent to jail and hammered with every enforcement mechanism in the state’s arsenal–driver license suspension, Financial Institution Data Match (FIDM), liens on vehicles or other personal property, etc. In the worst cases, there is little to argue for the payor parent.
But the fact remains, most people responsible for paying child support and dealing with the child support system are not monsters out to scam the enforcement system. Typically, they’re caring parents who find themselves, for one reason or another, stuck in some measure of financial stress. They have temporary financial set backs, whether from illness, injury, unemployment, underemployment, which isn’t necessarily a negative commentary on things like education and personal responsibility. Life circumstances play a large part in every family situation. Nonetheless, Florida law applies a fairly strict standard for parents to meet the best interest of the child. The enforcer of state child support laws is the Department of Revenue (DOR), through the arm of the Child Support Enforcement Program. That agency carries a big stick when it comes to enforcement. DOR is Florida’s IRS.
The DOR spends about $50 million a year on its administration, computer systems and databases, and uses them to enforce and impose child support obligations. DOR is not concerned with parenting, visitation, or the positive functioning of families. Neither are they concerned with the impact on children whose fathers are labeled deadbeats. Fair warning to all parents out there who aren’t current on their child support obligation–For a payment delinquency as short as two weeks, a non-human, a computer program, may suspend a father’s driver’s license, vehicle registration, occupational license and passport; freeze his bank account; and destroy his credit, all without a hearing. The reality for parents who fall under these auspices–total financial chaos can happen. All without first getting an opportunity to be heard.
Faced with the prospect of facing the heavy hand many parents go underground. They start working cash jobs. Suddenly they have few traceable assets. Their lives become transient, impermanent. This serves no one, certainly not the children. The greatest injustice is in what happens to the kids.
When payor parents gets ensnared with the Child Support Enforcement system, it is nearly impossible to enforce visitation and access to the children. Judges and Magistrates who manage the court case load have no jurisdiction to hear anything other than child suppor. The child support division is only tasked with calculating and collecting money. That’s why child support cases have their own case numbers. Child support cases are usually totally separate from divorce cases or Establishment cases. It will take the Judge holding jurisidiction in a family law matter to join cases, and this is a matter of judicial discretion.
To fight for visitation and access, a paying father may have to navigate a complicated legal maneuver to transfer his case out of the child support division to the main family division. Most people aren’t going to know what to do. Sometimes they will try to start it, and get frustrated or bogged down. The whole process is expensive with a lawyer, incomprehensible without one, and typically results in an extremely long wait to get to court.
The fields of psychology and mental health research agree that a child’s time with both parents is crucial to the child’s long-term health and development. But the Child Support Enforcement program is solely focused on money. That agency is blind to the nurturing needs of children and broken families. Its blindness is built into the program, and in many cases, good people get burdened with following the mandates of that program. The focus of DOR and its computer programs results in a prioritization of collections over the consequences.
It falls upon the parents to overcome this juxtaposition. There is no victimhood when there is initiative. Find and attorney who can help. Family law attorneys assist ligitants working through the system. Attorneys are the most effective way for payor parents to navigate the Court system and avoid trouble with the DOR.
