Getting dads to pay up may be new lesson in reality
Say you’re taking orders at the takeout window of McDonald’s. You make $6.75 an hour, which adds up to a bit over $1,000 a month. You get a notice that you’re in arrears on child support payments, $693 a month for the two children with your ex-wife. Of course, $693 per month is ridiculously high, given your income. But you never answered the legal complaint lodged against you – maybe the state didn’t bother to find you. So the state set the support payment in your absence at an amount not based on your actual income, but at a standard presumed income of $2,200 a month. You don’t make the payments because they are way beyond what you can afford. The state charges you 10 percent interest on the accruing debt.
You miss more payments. The interest compounds. The debt grows.
Multiply this scenario by several million and you begin to understand how back payment for child support in California has grown to $17 billion, according to an alarming report released last week by the state Department of Child Support Services. California isn’t alone; arcane child support laws – and a sagging economy – have plunged parents across the country deep into a debt that promises only to get deeper. Consider the situation in California: Ten years ago the state’s back child support debt was $2.5 billion. That represented 10 percent of the nation’s arrears, which made sense: California had 10 percent of the country’s child support caseload. Now California has 12 percent of the caseload – and 20 percent of the nation’s arrears debt. With a state budget deficit of $38 billion, California ought to be leading the way in dismantling a dysfunctional support-payment system that is ruining thousands of American families. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. If it continues as is, the report warned, the arrears debt in California alone will surpass $30 billion by 2010.
“No question, a new day is needed in child support,” Department of Child Support Services Assistant Director Leora Gershenzon said from Sacramento, Calif.
California is particularly bad at getting non-custodial parents to participate in setting the payment amount. That’s why more than 70 percent of child support payments are set by default; in most states the default rate is 40 percent. There is apparently little effort made in California to track down the non-custodial parent before the hearing. This is ridiculous, especially considering that the report’s authors were able to find 85 percent of the debtors simply by using online databases. Without input from the non-custodial parent, payments cannot be based on actual income but rather on presumed income. The result in such cases, as this report quantifies, is the parent is less likely to pay. Already, the report is prompting the state Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee to propose changes. It has suggested offering a clemency program to get low-income debtors to come forward and pony up what they can in exchange for the state forgiving chunks of what they owe. It would reduce the debt and increase the flow of money to the families. The money paid from the parent to the family reduces the amount the government has to pay in public assistance.
California and other states that charge interest on arrears should reduce the 10 percent rate to a number more in line with current rates. And it should apply back payments to the principal rather than to the accrued interest.
In any case, the report’s authors say, the state can expect to recover only about 25 percent of the multibillion-dollar debt. Low-income parents, who make up the bulk of the debtors, simply don’t have the money to pay. This is not to say they should be let off the hook. But the system in California, as in so many other states, now is set up for failure – for the parents who have been told to pay more than they earn, to families who end up on welfare and to the taxpayers who end up picking up the tab.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail to joanryan@sfchronicle.com.