Big daddy - federal government and child support

Reason, June, 1996 by Brian Doherty

Of course, those who are profiting from a crisis might not be too interested in ending it. And as the feds embroil themselves more and more in child support, they've set up financial incentives that allow many state governments to profit from child support money intended for welfare babies.

When child support orders go to parents on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the money is paid to the state child support office. Only $50 of it is passed on to the mothers - the rest is supposed to help offset the costs to the government of AFDC. This system undermines on-the-record participation by many absent dads, and makes official data on the number of fathers ignoring their families even more suspect.

As interviews with a cross-section of Washington, D.C., welfare mothers for the American Public Welfare Association showed, many mothers find it makes no sense to try to force the father to participate officially in the program. If the father is even slightly cooperative, it's better to cut an under-the-table deal with him that would net mother and child more than $50. "You're just wasting your time in court, filling out the papers, for nothing," one mother griped. "Is it better to get the $50 or for him to provide the clothing?" asked another, who opted for unofficial aid from her child's dad.

With the federal government paying 66 percent of collection costs, plus incentives that amount to 6 percent to 10 percent of all the money the state dragoons from absent dads, many states manage to turn child support collection into a cash cow, generating millions that they can use for any other government function they want. Overall, 1995 figures show state governments made $431 million in profit off of running their state offices of child support. Taxpayers are still overall losers, though; the feds spent $1.3 billion on the program in the same year.

As with many huge, overarching social disasters, no one really knows for sure how big the deadbeat dad problem is, or if the $1.3 billion the federal government spent is really helping. Laurie Casey, a senior policy analyst with the Children's Rights Council, a national advocacy group that pushes joint custody, estimates that as much as 90 percent of the child support currently paid through these programs would be paid even absent all the government muscle. While the specific figure is hard to calculate, House staffers and child support lawyers I talked to said the same: For most fathers with any means to pay, a simple court order (if even that) would suffice to get fair child support payments, and the bureaucracy might be benefiting no one but the bureaucrats. Since the states get paid incentives based on how much they collect, "It gives an incentive for the state to just go after the easy ones, the people who would have paid anyway," says Casey. "It's a disincentive to go after the hard cases."

The image of the callous dad who just doesn't give a damn is the main impetus behind the move for a stronger and harsher government role in the child support process. Certainly, such dads exist. But many fathers feel mistreated themselves by the child support process, particularly its presumption that in most cases the children should stay with the mother. One father embroiled in child support litigation in Michigan says, "I've presented the court with good evidence that my wife has lied, but six months later the kids are still with her. She's made false charges, but I might have to pay her legal fees."