Oh [shit – it’s my] ex!
–Cliffy
Yes, local attorneys and the court informally use OX as the shorthand for the whole OX process. “Do an OX.” “How was the OX?”
I have a standard form OX questionnaire if you want it. You can also use it to draft interrogatories to send to the debtor.
A crime in and of itself.
I haven’t done thins but you might get him in an OX and ask for his ATM cards. If he produces them, then hit his bank with a levy that way.
Would public shaming work to change the attitude of the people in the child support agency who are dragging their feet? What if the mother was able to get a TV reporter interested in her story and the reporter mentioned on air how the public servants weren’t interested in collecting thousands of dollars in child support. Any publicity she’d be able to shine on the situation might serve to kick start the process.
I worked collections as a lawyer for a brief while - HATED it. As you are finding out, obtaining a judgment and collecting on it are entirely different matters. Many folks might be astounded at the lengths many folk go to to make themselves judgment proof. And collections vary HUGELY state-to-state, and I know nothing about CA law.
There are collections firms who will go after the deadbeat for a portion of what they manage to collect. As someone said, part of what you are owed is better than nothing.
In IL, support payments are given priority over just about everything else, and there is a considerable institutional framework to assist spouses/children. That definitely would be the first place I’d look.
I would first take it up with the agency’s ombudsman.
From: FAQs
Would it be worth hiring a private investigator to follow the guy for a week, or even do it yourself? Find out where he’s working, what banks he’s using, etc. It seems like in this situation the more you know about the guy, the better.
What does it take before they put a guy in jail for non-payment? I know it happens, but I don’t think it happens often.
I’ve never done this, so I don’t know if it works, but a little trick I heard was to send him a check for $30 or some low amount from a friend’s account under the pretext of repaying a fake debt along with a note saying, “Here’s the money I owe you, thanks!”
He will be baffled and he won’t recognize the drawer of the check, but he might deposit it or cash it though his own account. Use a temporary check without the drawer’s contact info on it so he can’t call anyone to investigate it.
It costs you a little money to do this, but if he negotiates the check through his own account, you can get his bank information off the back of the check.
The Illinois version of the California “OX” is the Citation to Discover Assets. A judgment debtor who is served with a citation and fails to show will have a body attachment issued (basically a bench warrant). The body attachment will set an amount for bail (to which Illinois’s 10% bail bond provisions do not apply). The debtor will be arrested and the cash bail will be applied to the judgment.
Also explained in this article.
Getting a bench warrant issued is the new getting a judgment. Either one can be a pyrrhic victory. I recently got a bench warrant issued against a debtor who failed to show up at an examination. I got the warrant issued during a hearing on another motion I’d filed in the case, and the judge was only too happy to issue the warrant.
I dutifully sent a copy to the sheriff. When I called the sheriff to make sure I had the correct details, I asked, “So when will you pick him up?”
A. Huh?
Q. It’s a warrant. Shouldn’t you arrest him?
A. We don’t house on civil warrants because we don’t have the space.
Q. Umm . . . ok, so you’re not going to go pick him up then, I take it. What if he gets stopped for a traffic violation, won’t the warrant come up on the computer?
A. Sure, but we don’t house on civil warrants.
Q. So he won’t be held, even if another agency has him in custody?
A. Correct.
Q. Is there any way I can get this guy arrested? Can I get a court officer to pick him up?
A. Um. . . . nope, only the sheriff has that authority.
Q. But you won’t do it.
A. Correct.
He now has a bench warrant that was issued, coincidentally, for failure to show up at a contempt hearing for failure to pay child support. I’m watching to see if *that *gets him picked up.
Bureaucracy at its best there.
Child support is different from most owed debts because it’s actually enforced. I’ve even had sucess getting social security to cooperate with me to help a friend get her husband to pay support.
You have to check state laws, these often make it criminal to avoid payment. They can do things, depending on the state, like suspend driver’s licenses or even jail time. Of course if they are in jail you can’t get any pay from them, but you can make their lives miserable.
There are people who have thrown their non-child support paying spouses in jail then attached their prison wage of like a quarter a day. That way their time in jail is really unpleasent.
If you have their social security number, they’re screwed, you just attach their wages and they can’t work or take credit out as long as you have it, you can mess with their report.
Check with the state the judgement is issued. If they aren’t being helpful, it may be wise to move to another state, such as Illinois, with which has very strict enforcement, and you can get the judgement there.
In Illinois once you get that judgement they will take the money right out of the person’s pay, no option to do otherwise, and it looks bad to the employer and it follows them.
I would try myself to collect first by boneing up on laws, 'cause most of the lawyers collect and charge you a fee (A percentage of what they collect) for doing what you could do youself with some work.
Is credit card debt as serious as child support debt?
No. Non-payment of support can be a crime.
To answer some questions:
Take him to court on an OX? He has lied for years and never got called on it. He even faked a court order, got an attorney to signed it, then produced it in court to drag Mrs Cad into court on 78 counts of Contempt (one for each day she did not abide by this faked order that she never even knew about). When he finally admitted it was a fake, the judge threw out the case. No consequences for him and we were out $20,000 in attorney fees.
Arrest for non-payment in Los Angeles County? Maybe 2 or 3 in the last decade.
I’ll refer her to the state and I’ve long since tried to get her to report him to the IRS. Hell, I may do it myself and get the 10% finders fee (if they still do that)
Doesn’t he want to see the kids? How much of an involved father is he?
Holy mackerel. What happened to the attorney who signed it?
Color me skeptical - a faked court order like that shouldn’t take 20K to defend, and that’s disbarment-level contempt of court and could be fraud or perjury. There’s gotta be more to this story, or maybe the facts were a bit different.