SOBERING: How Child Support Enforcement Works.

The story was that some people – ghetto residents in particular – were irresponsibly having lots of children and leaving the rest of us to foot the bill. As usual, the politicians came up with a clever plan that would both protect their welfare recipient constituents and assuage the anger of the middle class. The idea was to not solve the problem, but to find someone to beat down so as to demonstrate their toughness, and grab some cash in the meanwhile.

The result was the Bradley amendment, which effectively resurrected slavery and debtors’ prison in the United States. A number of states immediately interpreted this as a way to seize as much income as possible from noncustodial parents – disproportionately working class and black men to begin with – and turn it over to states and counties for welfare expenditure. . . .

The idea was to increase state revenue by allowing state seizure of funds without traditional safeguards. This is why politicians loved it so much. Not only could they arbitrarily grab cash from men; they could sell it as a good deed! Hell, even the welfare attorneys loved it. They’re getting paid from state funds too, after all. . . .

However, not all funds are so easily taken as state lottery winnings. Sometimes, men keep cash, assets, private accounts and so on, and sometimes their loved ones have money. In this case, you’ve got to really twist their arms, and nothing does that better than threatening to throw them in county lockup. . . .

A recent Supreme Court decision – Turner v. Rogers – called this state of affairs into question. A man named Michael Turner, who had been in and out of jail on child support contempt cases for much of the last decade, argued that if he was going to be jailed, he should have the right to counsel. Ultimately, the court found that because it was a civil rather than criminal contempt case, Turner did not have the right to counsel, but to ensure that his 14th amendment rights weren’t violated states should adopt guidelines that prevent incarceration of men who do not have the ability to pay. . . .

However, this doesn’t mean that noncustodial parents are out of the woods yet. Not even close. Awards remain excessive, extortion by mothers using claims of physical and/or sexual abuse and other forms of slander/perjury is still a common tactic in the courtroom, and coercion is still the rule. Although contempt jailings are in decline, you can still easily end up in jail due to a license suspension.