Hypothetically, if someone had 30 kids from 30 different women that he impregnated within the span of a few years, what would the courts do about child support?
There would be no way for him to support 30 kids, so would he end up in jail as a dead-beat dad? Would the judge order him to pay a minuscule amount to each kid? Something else?
Putting him in jail would mean he couldn’t support any of the kids. They’d garnish his wages and split it up however they see fit.
I had an employee with 4 (IIRC) kids from 3 moms all garnishing his wages (plus some back support). It took a really big bite out of his paycheck and would put him into little depressions/drinking binges from time to time and he disappear for a few weeks at a time. The problem was that he could work and barely take home anything so he’d work a ton more hours the next week and still barely take home anything. Yes, I know he put himself in that situation, but I can understand it must be difficult to work 40+ hours a week and take home something measly like $150 (don’t quote me on that, I’m not at work and can’t look up the actual numbers).
So, yeah, I think the courts would just garnish what they could up to the legal max and give each mom whatever they felt made sense. In a case like that, it wouldn’t surprise me if they looked at the financial standing of each mother and used that to help figure something out. If they only have, say, $200 a week to divvy up, the $25 a month is going to mean a lot more to some of them than others.
What you’re saying makes sense, but haven’t some deadbeat dads been put in jail? doesn’t that mean they couldn’t support any of their kids?
Given that the answer to this must be speculative, and will vary between states, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Technically, you’re not supposed to be jailed because of inability to pay debts, only the refusal to do so despite being able. That said, there are a lot of ways to end up in jail if you fall behind on child support payments. Here’s a New York Times article I found on the issue:
He’s likely lose a very large percentage of his income for his support obligation. The additional amount necessary for actual support would come from you and me and the other tax payers in the form of welfare and benefits.
You get put in jail when you’re ordered to pay a certain amount, and you can pay, but you refuse to do so. If you’re paying what you’re legally required to pay, then there’s no jail. And the amount you’re legally required to pay is supposed to be set by a reasonable judge. Child support isn’t set at a certain dollar amount per child, regardless of how much money you make. Your income and assets are supposed to be taken into account.
Where people go to jail is when child support is ordered at a certain level, and they lose their job or get a much lower paying job, and now they can’t make the payments. You can go to court and ask the judge to change the child support order, but you have to convince the judge that you didn’t quit your job or lower your wages on purpose, and that you don’t have other income or assets. If the judge doesn’t believe your argument, then you don’t get the amount changed. And if you don’t pay, you can be arrested. This happens not because you can’t pay, but because the judge thinks you can pay, but just won’t.
Your mistake is thinking that child support is awarded by calculating how much each child needs per month, and ordering the non-custodial parent to pay that amount. It doesn’t work that way, you shouldn’t be ordered to pay money for child support that you don’t have. Of course now out of the woodwork will come hundreds of deadbeat dads complaining about how the judge screwed them with ordering unreasonable child support. I’m sure it happens. But what happened wasn’t that the judge followed some formula multiplied by the number of kids and figured you owed millions. What happened was that the judge didn’t believe your arguments. Maybe the judge should have believed you, maybe they shouldn’t have, but the judge didn’t believe you.
Only 4 kids? Pshhh, that’s amateur hour. I had an employee with 9, spread out over an equal number of baby mamas. Of course, he was a janitor…
There’s two ways to look at it:
As far as throwing a person in jail, it isn’t a matter of not having the ability to pay, it about having the willingness to pay. When I review a case, if a person is trying his/her hardest, but just can’t do it, I won’t pursue contempt. However, if I contact an obligor with job placement programs, info on job fairs, suggest they file a motion to reduce support and they do nothing? Then yes, I may file civil contempt. Today I sent four cases to our attorney’s office for contempt. The one thing all four have in common is that the obligor will not work with me.
They should post this story on the back of condom wrappers.
In Arizona you only have to pay child support for the first 6 kids you have. I know someone who had 7 kids with her husband. When they split up he only had to pay child support for the first 6. Once the oldest ages out, he starts paying on the youngest.
I remember reading a few articles on someone who’d been dubbed “the deadbeat dad” or something along those lines. He was a blue collar worker in his 40s but had something like 17 children with nine or ten different women.
One of the mothers laughingly revealed that since she only had one of his 17 children, her “cut” of the maximum percentage of his garnished paycheck was only $9 per week.
Or on the back of cereal boxes.
Just remember that this guy is the evolutionary winner of today’s society. This is the future we chose.
In some states, the child support formula can order a child support payment in the complete absence of income.
It’s a nominal amount, to be sure - 50-60 dollars a month (I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations for a friend) - but if your income is zero, you are still supposed to come up with that.
Would someone be jailed for that?
Possibly. The opinion of some is that a person can work a temp job for a few days a month and pay $50, or even sell plasma to pay that small amount. Usually, cases that I receive with the minimum $50/mo charging is because the custodial parent receives cash assistance and the court wants a token sum to minimally offset the assistance.
Because that’s the way it’s pitched. It’s for the child, not a punishment for the parent. The ability to pay has nothing to do with what the child needs.
What it really is is a fine. Which is would be acceptable. But then they use only the fine money to give the kids, regardless of need. This is dumb. It means a lot of unsupported kids with a few who get a ton of money. It really should be pooled and evenly distributed.
Then it would really be about the kids.
Until we start doing that for all kids, of course kid’s support is going to be proportional to parental income. Why wouldn’t it be?
For a start they should probably order him to get a vasectomy.