A question about child support and the Eighth Amendment.

I don’t think that being jailed for contempt results in a criminal record but I could be wrong. But let’s say that instead of ordering the deadbeat parent jailed for contempt he instead orders the DP to go to job counseling, register with placement agencies and temp agencies and the like, and the DP doesn’t. What do you suggest the judge do then?

Other debts aren’t generally the result of court orders. That’s where you seem to be getting tripped up. My credit card debt isn’t the result of a court order so the credit card company doesn’t have access to the same rememdies that a judge does.

Why don’t they just set bail equal to the amount the guy owes, and when he pays up they give the money to the custodial parent?

Congratulations, you’ve just reinvented the debtors prison, where the debtor was effectively held hostage by the state. If the debtor didn’t have the means to satisfy the debt, his imprisonment would often induce friends and family members to raise the ransom from their own resources.

A few time, this may be the case, but overall, that’s a pretty brutal statement. Child support does not equate to loving the child, it’s simply financial support, no more or less. There my be a lot of issues that keep the father from paying his support. Maybe the mother is a party animal and blows all the money that he sends? I could list circumstances all day long, but I won’t.

To say a person who doesn’t pay their support doesn’t love their child, then calling him an asshole is ludicrous.

I would like to hear an example of a circumstance where a support-payer can’t or shouldn’t pay, but also can’t go to court and raise that issue with the judge. So far we’ve heard: not enough money, lost a job, and spouse isn’t spending it right. None of those meet the above criterion.

To begin with, judges aren’t stupid (most aren’t, at any rate). They know that people have money troubles, and that money troubles are compounded by incarceration. They don’t like jailing people for nonpayment if they don’t have to. If someone is behind on their child support, they would far prefer to place them on probation and add a potion of their arrearage to their monthly payment, with the understanding that if the agreement isn’t met that it could will result in some jail time. Most obligors are happy for the chance to stay out of jail, and courts will often bend over backwards to keep from putting the obligor in jail if it appears they are showing up for court, paying what they can and making a good faith effort at paying their order and arrearages. Judges understand that inabilty to pay doesn’t mean that an obligor doesn’t love their child, but are also quick to point out that the child can’t eat kisses, can’t wear hugs, and can’t buy school supplies with love. First and foremost the court wants to encourage the obligor to do the right thing.

That’s usually involves a few hundred dollars, or occassionally a few thousand. Most people don’t show up in court one day and discover that they accrued $13,500 in child support arrearage when they weren’t looking. Assuming a support order for one child based around minimum wage, that’s about seven years of complete nonpayment. Generally, that means not coming to court, only working a job for a month or two so as to avoid their checks being withheld by the AG, and moving periodically so as to avoid detection and process. That’s not an inability to pay, that’s an outright refusal to pay and thumbing their nose at a court order. In that circumstance, damn right a judge will order an obligor held without bail. Courts try to be understanding of those who are working and trying to abide by the system, but they mean also business, and those who aren’t taking them seriously get the business end.

I suppose because they don’t need to: if the person comes up with that amount, she can just give it to the custodial parent, and there’s no more reason to lock her up.

pravnik nailed it in one. Yes, there are a million legitimate reasons why someone can’t keep current on their child support. However, there are also a million ways to demonstrate willingness to pay: making a lesser, regular payment; showing up to legal proceedings with a plan, and so on; jail time and other onerous penalties are generally only issued as a last resort for the very snakiest of the snaky. [a family member is an attorney specializing in this area].

What part of “they get to get out of jail for work, then go back to jail” did you fail to comprehend??? :rolleyes:
Trust me, you get no help from me, here. I have a support order. I had it modified when it turned out to be more than I could reasonably handle, and circumstances had changed. I’ve faced the possibility of going to jail for non-payment, and it motivated me to make damn sure it never ever happened again.

And let’s not forget who are the real victims in this scenario: Won’t someone please think about the children? The children of these deadbeats are the ones suffering, economically, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically.

Children are expensive. And no matter how much you hate their other parent, any decent person will love the child more.

That’s the standard line that gets used when either side has an agenda that has more to do with “winning”, and inflicting damage on the opposition, than the welfare of the children.

A pox on both their houses.

Perhaps not. But he may be doing it to spite the mother of the kid, and not thinking a great deal about the person that is really being hurt.

I fucking HATE that “argument”. It’s just an emotional appeal.

We’re talking about child support. It is the argument.

Wrong. It’s a tactic designed to make the other side look bad if they disagree.

Children aren’t the only factor in child support. If they were, divorce would be illegal except in very few situations.

You can raise the issue with a judge, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get your amount lowered. You have to prove that you are not willfully under or unemployed, and you have to show lowered income over a period of time. During that time, you rack up arrears. Those don’t go away because you lost income. And then, you don’t have a lawyer because you can’t afford it. If your ex does, your payments are less likely to get lowered. And you have to travel to the county where your kid lives, to show up in court. I know, boo hoo, but it can incur a hardship if you live far away from your kid and are having money problems, so might be difficult or impossible. So there are reasons why a person might have trouble getting to court to change an order. Maybe it’s not as hard as I’ve been led to believe, but it’s also not as easy as some are saying here. Having a cooperative co-parent very likely makes a huge difference in how it goes.

Fair enough, but these are all basically process arguments right? I can see how jurisdiction issues, obtaining counsel, etc., will always lead to inefficiencies and unfairness (as is true in every area of the law), but I find it hard to believe that any of those process barriers are sufficient to lead to a situation where one gets a contempt charge. As others have said, it usually takes intentional effort not to pay/show up in the court, not the opposite.

And if it’s only process issues, then “feminist laws” etc. aren’t to blame.

Poor people get shafted in the legal system, I think is the bottom line. Whoever has the better lawyer usually wins (which is why celebrities never get convicted of crimes in this country-- topic for another thread). The thing about the contempt charge-- what I think happens is you’d fall further and further into arrears. First, they suspend your passport, then your driver’s license, then jail. That’s how you’d slip into a situation where you were in enough trouble to get hauled into court. You might not intend to be shorting your kid, but you are, and the back debt piles up.

I didn’t say that. The person who did probably could explain better.

While I agree with the general sentiment, I don’t think whoever has the better lawyer usually wins. But like you said, it’s a topic for a different thread.

I didn’t mean to imply that you did.

While this is true, and the OP doesn’t know if or for how long any similar shenanigans have been going on in that case, I will add that my ex spent over 2 years of my active struggle to get support not paying his court ordered child support, not showing up for some court dates and intentionally underemploying himself on paper (his mother told me he was working for his uncle for cash under the table) without being thrown in jail OR having his license taken away. Every time, the judge would explain to me (and him, if he was there) that he, the judge, didn’t see how depriving him of the means of getting to work or the freedom to do so, would improve the situation any. In other words, exactly your arguments. And they did absolutely nothing to improve my son’s situation.

Yes, I get what you’re saying, but with a work release, jail still sucks. There comes a time when “help” and kindness doesn’t do it, and some people need fear, terror and extreme boredom to get the idea that maybe it’d be easier to simply do the right thing by their kids.

After two years, I just gave up, frankly. I don’t know, maybe that was the week the judge would have actually done something different. Kid’s 14 now, and thanks to generous grandparents, we’ve been more or less okay, but there were several years of food pantries involved there.