Child Support Piling Up – and Owed to the Government

There’s an interesting article in one of yesterday’s papers (I won’t tell you its name because it requires a paid subscription and I have no desire to promote newspapers that do that) about child support enforcement and the impact it has on some so-called deadbeat parents. Here’s an interesting statistic for you from the article: something like 50% of back child support is owed not to custodial parents or to children but to a government.

The article describes the case of a father who’s raising two children now, neither of which he fathered. One is the half sister of his oldest child, and the other is the child of his wife. Yet he has trouble doing that because he owes $11,000 in back child support to the state where he lives. Making $11 per hour, he has little hope of paying that debt, at least until his fortunes improve.

Would it be fair to forgive child support for a parent who can show that he’s actively supporting other children? The article takes a discernible point of view that it would be.

Okay, if you read this far, it’s in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun. The Headline is Child Support Collection Becomes Issue in Maryland.

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