Cutting to the chase on the deadbeats' trail - parents who are delinquent in meeting child support payments

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 26, 1993 | by Susan Moran

Summary: Overburdened state and local agencies are notoriously slow at tracking down "deadbeat" parents -- those who are behind on child support payments. That has led may custodial parents to turn to private collection agencies, while the White House and Congress consider a larger federal role.

Since Martha Bond picked up her baby daughter, Leah, and walked out on the man she was living with 15 years ago, life hasn't been easy. She left Leah's father, a construction supervisor named Tommy Graganus, now 39, because he wasn't helping out with the bills or the child's care, she says.

Bond supported Leah alone until the financial burden became too heavy. Then, in 1987, she got a court order in Virginia forcing Graganus to pay child support, but the payments dried up after three years. Since then, Bond has struggled with the local and state social service agencies in an unsuccessful attempt to collect support.

"He can't manage his money," says Bond. "If you don't make him pay, he's not going to. I've has to go through hell and high water to hire someone to find him and make him pay."

Bond, of Virginia Beach, is not alone. Noncustodial parents are behind on their legally required support payments to the tune of more than $30 billion nationwide, according to the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services. In 1989 (the latest year for which figures are available), 58 percent of the 10 million mothers in households where the father was absent had obtained legal orders for child support. Out of these 5.8 million women, 51 percent received full payment, 24 percent received less than full payment and 25 percent received nothing.

The financial impact has been enormous: The federal government spent almost $15 billion in 1989 and almost $20 billion in 1992 in assistance to single-parent families, according to a senior goverment official in the Office of Family Assistance at HHS.

Despite the existence of a legal framework for enforcing child support, compelling reluctant parents to meet their obligations is difficult. Local and state authorities have proved largely ineffective: Out of $23.8 billion in delinquent payments nationwide in 1990, the states collected only about 20 percent, according to Elizabeth Larson in the April issue of Reason magazine.

Faced with a social crisis that grows more explosive every year, Bill Clinton's administration and some members of Congress are calling for drastic action: They want to see the responsibility for collecting child support transferred to the federal level.

"I think the government needs to start zapping these guys and say, |Hey pal, take care of your kid'," says Bond.

But it's oftne unclear who needs to be zapped. Asked about the accusations, Graganus, who lives in Maryland, admits he hasn't paid child support for months -- but adds that he has let Bond live in a house he owns for more than four years. "I agree with paying the child support, but I do not agree with paying umpteen thousand dollars that I don't owe."

Bond's quest for child support has been typical of that of many single mothers. After the court-ordered payments stopped coming, Bond filed a complaint with the District Child Support Enforcement Agency in Norfolk, Va., a state organization. The agency was able to get payments from Graganus, who was living in Virginia. But that arrangement lasted only a few months. Graganus disappeared and the payments stopped.

At that point, Bond filed another complaint, which was passed on to the state's central agency in Richmond. But like most state agencies, the one in Richmond was swamped with complaints, and it never located Graganus, let alone got payments.

Frustated by months of waiting for a response, in September 1991, Bond, like many single parents, finally took matters into her own hands: She went to a private Norfolk agency called Child Support Services, which tracks down delinquent parents for an initial fee of $35 plus 25 percent of the child support they procure. Child Support Services, one of many private collection companies started in the past few years, tracked down Graganus within a month and persuaded his boss to garnish the child support from his wages.

Bond says that Graganus, not she, should be paying the collection agency's fee. "But something is better than nothing," she says.

Judging from the success of these private collection agencies, many more parents agree. After Jerry Polito's ex-wife left him in 1892, he became one of the first fathers in Kansas to win custody of a child. Polito's ex-wife, Marian challenged in court Polito's right to custody of their son, David, but lost. A court ordered her to pay $225 a month in child support, but she failed to do so.

Polito, who now lives in Virginia Beach, also went to Child Support Services, which found his ex-wife and persuaded her to make the payments. "I got the runaround [from the government]," he says of the year he spent trying to work through the system. Polito, who has remarried, says a person's ability to pay child support should be determined by the former spouse's income ant the new spouse's income. "When I married Pam, I didn't marry just Pam. I also got her daughter and her son. My money goes for that, too," he says.