K.C. Wilson - The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

Men's News Daily is serializing K.C. Wilson's book, The Multiple Scandals of Child Support. The following is the first installment of the series...

The Multiple Scandals of Child Support

By

K.C. Wilson

INTRODUCTION

The common perception is that the child support enforcement measures put in place over the last two decades of the 20^th century are both warranted (if not long overdue) and effective. This Special Report examines both assumptions.

The principle finding is an array of contradictions and strong emotions. The author submits that these characterize a society in transition: A society with obvious contradictions in its formal culture (the “public thinking” level) is usually still adjusting its group thinking in response to underlying structural changes. Since that is the principle finding, it is used as the premise for presenting the results. That is, the spirit in which this Report is written is that Northern European-based society is still adjusting to industrialization.

This is not a mainstream premise, which is its advantage. We seek a bleacher from which to examine mainstream perceptions as part of the equation: as both result and cause.

The story of child support enforcement in all countries primarily populated by people of Northern European origin is one of misdirections, multiple complex issues, people only hearing distortions because of what they want to believe, contradictions, overlapping agendas, ghost agendas, and even intrigue. It includes but is not restricted to government agencies seeking validity and growth, women seeking security, politicians seeking to please their electorate, men and women seeking what each sees as justice, and corporations seeking profit.

All participants use children as their justification, which often seems like the use of “In The Name of the Lord” to justify everything committed for European expansion between 1500 and 1900. However true it may be, we refrain from saying anyone has “the best of intentions” because everyone believes they do, but this does not prevent their use as an instrument of larger forces.

Understand the implication: We do not find that any one person or group has been conspiring with Satan. Every player believes sincerely in their rightfulness. Our most fundamental assumption is the basic good of every human, not the evil which is a common stance of many European sects so will commonly underlie the position of many who differ with this Report.

The above also means we will refrain from any speculation as to what may or may not be in “a child’s best interests,” at least until the end. We only examine what has and is being done and leave the reader to their own conclusions.

This examination only covers events in the United States, but all the same forces are in play in all Northern European countries. The same things are happening in Canada, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and all others with variance only in degree and form. We ultimately seek to identify the underlying forces – what is really driving these events and why – as likely the only way to remove the chaff from the grain for what is appropriate social policy. But such discussion is withheld for the “Analysis” section. Until then, observations and comments are formatted to the side.

The Premise

The Report’s premise was introduced above, and here we clarify it. It is that the Industrial Revolution is still under way. It is not a thing of the past, but is currently in its technology leg. How long it will continue cannot be predicted, and social adjustment to a new economic environment lags by several generations, so the social discord and confusion can be expected to continue beyond any end to the economic changes. We are still trying to find our humanity in a context never previously encountered by any human society.

As a simplified model: Before industrialization, men, women and children were all equally involved in a family’s economic, social, and religious life. Economic, social, and religious life were indistinguishable. Education, work, home, philosophy, science and religion were indistinguishable.

With industrialization – the child of Northern European disassociation from nature and the control over it this provided – came the symptoms of a civilization: general affluence and high degrees of specialization. Reductionism. Fragmentation. Fragmentation of the family, the economy, of social and economic life, all accelerating the fragmentation of the spiritual. Before industrialization, we were the barbarians. We are the ones who sacked Rome, and then Montezuma’s city simply because we didn’t understand it.^[1]

In the 1700s, brawn was needed for the factories and mines, so men had to separate from the family to be part of the family. By 1900, men saw themselves as the slaves: slaves to the economic system, to the demands of commerce, and saw themselves protecting their wives and children from it as long as they could. It was male nurturing. A man was deeply ashamed if his wife had to work. He was not protecting his family, giving them their opportunity to simply be human and free from use as industrial cogs. True luxury was when he could join them and not work. It was called being a gentleman.

Imagine that man awakening in the 1970s to find women convinced that joining that economic machinery was liberating. Imagine his wife awakening to this. Many like to imagine his wife would be pleased rather than shocked and dismayed. Would that be just to retro-justify contemporary perceptions?

Such are the dramatic social changes Euro-rooted society has been enduring since the 1700s, each generation facing its own challenges to its humanity, seeking social adjustment. Do we have any idea what caused that one just mentioned? Do we even understand what it was, or are we still only finding excuses for it that simply satisfy its own new desires?

If one prefers conspiracies, one might blame the above on industrialists who saw in women an untapped source of labor, keeping its cost down. They even pitted men and women against each other to distract us from their own villainy.

The twist I just gave may not be the current mainstream view, but could become so, and is not without merit. Does it make more sense or less than a mass conspiracy by men to keep women oppressed?

The point is that the most essential skill for the political scientist, cultural anthropologist, or any social scientist is to see through others’ eyes, and ultimately, see one’s own eyes. It is to even invent new paradigms and examine all the same things fully and empathetically through all of them to know the validity of each. That is lesson number one.

Child support and its enforcement at the start of the 21^st century provides a vivid, living laboratory for the student of political science, cultural anthropology, sociology, public policy, and any social science: It is a chance to examine firsthand the kinds of forces that can and do forge a society’s practices and conventions. Conventions must reforge when a society’s economic context changes, as has been discovered by any which has experienced them. That is lesson number two. But delving into something as immediate as this is its own very challenging test. We’ll need all the help with a more distant objectivity that we can get.

So that is the spirit in which this Report is written. For the purposes of this book – if only to be better able to examine current mainstream conventions and assumptions – we do not assume a mass conspiracy against an eternally oppressed woman, or a business conspiracy, or any conspiracy by anyone against anything. Rather, we assume that our society has been and will for some time be adjusting to huge and dramatic changes in the drastically different context created by industrialization; that it is seeking its soul in a new world; and that any conspiracy theories are as much a product of this as are many other conventions and popular precepts.

And our assumption is that any mainstream precepts are equally part of valid – if occasionally misguided – efforts to find that soul.

PART I

JUST THE FACTS

Is There a Problem?

Rumor vs. Reality

• “$34 billion in child support is not being paid.” [$17.1 billion was paid in 1997.]

• “Half of all child support is not paid.”

or, “Half the single mothers are not getting child support (/ the support to which they are entitled).”

or, “Half of all fathers do not pay their child support (/ do not live up to their obligations).”

Any form of the second one is attributed to Census Bureau data and even appeared in at least one book review, intended as a contradiction to the study the book described. (She hadn’t read the book, but was an expert on its topic.) Both are what one commonly hears and are uncritically reported and quoted and re-quoted, accepted as fact.

Is it true?

The only way one can claim that $34 billion in child support should be collected (a claim President Clinton made several times, referenced in a report by the Urban Institute which mentions it to contradict it) is by making all the following assumptions:

1. All custodial parents have orders for child support. (Commonly, 44 to 48% do not seek one.)

2. Those without orders are getting no child support. (At least 32% say they are.)

3. There is no joint custody. (Between 10 to 15% of currently divorced couples use joint custody.)

4. All cases have their child support amounts set according to the recently introduced Wisconsin Guidelines (which less than one-third of all states use).

5. All obligors (noncustodial parents) are making average or better incomes and are able to pay these amounts.

[Literary Convention: cp will hereafter be used for custodial parent, and ncp for noncustodial parent. However, these terms can be used to mask one dimension of reality. Since at least 85% of cps are women it would not be very inaccurate to replace cp with mother and ncp with father.]

We will go over the Census Bureau figures, and I am not sure what is being used for the claim that “half of support is not paid,” either from the 1980s or ’90s. We start by looking at the Census Bureau’s own findings about those who do not have child support orders, then those who do.

Those With No Orders for Child Support

Why do 44% of cps not officially seek child support? Are they examples of poor, helpless women who don’t know any better or don’t have the resources to get one? Do they want one? Are they afraid to ask? Should society ensure that every divorce with children has court-ordered child support and never leave this up to couples?

Every two years during the 1990s, the Census Bureau has asked those 44% their reasons for not seeking a court order. Consolidating some of the figures from page 3 of the 1997 Current Population Report [P60-212, issued October, 2000], their reasons are:

This is difficult to interpret for two reasons: Respondents can check multiple boxes so the above percentages add up to 172.9%; and only cps are polled, no ncps. The last point is to say that all Census Bureau data on child support is questionable as there is no corresponding survey of ncps for their version of what is going on and no cross-check of the two surveys. However, since it is equally questionable for the same reasons every year, the data are useful for year-to-year comparisons, but not absolute statements about how much child support is being paid.

Simply for discussion we attempt some consolidation of the above numbers. For instance, does “E: Not Want ncp to Pay” overlap with C or any of H, I, and J, and by how much? One could imagine “J: Not Feel Need to Make Legal” can overlap with everything, so may be eliminated. If we eliminate both E and J, we still have about 122%. Also, combine H and I for the minimum number of “Made Own Arrangements,” and we have:

“H: Own Arrangements,” at 35.6%, is surely the least we can assume to represents those who would not welcome society’s intrusion. There is also likely overlap between it and “F: Cannot Pay.” It is common among the poor for a nonresident father to help out with chores, babysitting, and other indirect support, being involved and giving all he can when he can, making the lack of cash palatable. So the 35.6% figure could be low.

Also buried somewhere will be reconciliations and allowing-for reconciliations.

Should all people have support orders whether they like it or not?

There are other questions. Out of “A: ncp Not Found,” “B: Paternity Not Legally Established,” “C: Not Want Contact with ncp,” and “G: Other,” how many are situations in which the cp is either of the two common concerns: afraid of the ncp or not aware they could do something?

Since it is difficult to imagine many mothers being so isolated as to be unaware of welfare and support options, the ignorance factor can be presumed low. The fear factor is being addressed by regulations allowing welfare workers to waive naming of the ncp for “good reason,” though both the regulations and their effectiveness are very controversial. Still, those numbers – however debatable – are relatively low.

On the other hand, it would not be unreasonable to imagine that categories A, B, C, and G may be masking much larger numbers of child abductions than cases of fear or ignorance. (Where the mother is hiding the child, even the fact there is one, from its father.) We don’t know, and no one is asking fathers or possible fathers.

Question: What constitutes justification for abduction, and what percentage of such women meet that criteria? Silence upon this endorses the notion that women decide whether a child has a father, a surprising degree of power to grant only one-half of society.

How many of those with no support orders would get them if they could and if the money were there (if the ncp could pay)? The most one could mark that figure at is A + B + C = 46.5% of those with no order. But overcoming the obstacles these categories represent is not simply a matter of public policy or public will. Many if not most may, under any circumstances, never pay. Some of those fathers are dead, in jail, or of poor health, or not even well enough known to the mother to be identifiable. What percentage can barely support themselves much less a family, and would only move over ton “F: Cannot Pay?”

The last item of interest is F. 24.5% of cps themselves know that the ncp simply cannot pay, so a court order is useless. This is a lower percentage for this category than we will find in the set of cps that have court orders.

Summary of Non-Court-Order Cases

For all the reasons above there is little to be gained – especially in gauging rates of compliance – by including cases which have never sought a court order for child support. The Census Bureau itself pays no further attention other than to survey for the reasons for their large numbers. We have only questions and doubts, not answers.

Compliance with Court Orders

One might gauge overall compliance in several ways:

•% of the total child support owed that is actually paid.

•% of cps getting some or all of their ordered child support.

•% of cps getting all ordered child support.

We seek an historical base to use as a benchmark for progression through the 1990s, but reliable figures are only available back to 1978. So below are the Census Bureau’s figures for 19798 through 1989. Remember that this is only what the cps say. There has been no survey of ncps by the Census Bureau or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (dhhs). All figures below are from the Census Bureau’s reports and the pages for each year comprise Appendix B. All values are in 1989 dollars.

	Number of Orders (,000)	Total Due ($ billions)	% Paid	Avg. Payment
1978	3424	12.6	64.3	$2,370
1981	4043	13.7	61.3	$2,080
1983	3995	12.5	70.4	$2,215
1985	4381	12.6	65.9	$1,892
1987	4840	15.9	68.6	$2,247
1989	4953	16.3	68.7	$2,252

Table 1: Percent of Total Support Owed That Is Paid, 1978 - 89

The values throughout the ’80s are surprisingly erratic, but remove the highest and lowest figures and it seems to hover at about a two-thirds compliance rate. One anomaly in trying to interpret this is that these are the numbers of cp households owed child support. Is the number of ncps the same or lower? That is, how many cases are there of one father to 2 or more households? How many cases of a man fully compliant toward one household but not another? Are there enough to make a difference on our impression of the numbers of fathers at least paying something?

During the late 1980s, Sanford Braver of Arizona State University did what the Census Bureau does not: cross-checked the stories from both recipient and payer as part of the largest and most comprehensive study ever done on divorced families in the United States. His team found that the average overall compliance rate was, in fact, 70%, which would seem a more reliable figure to use for that period.

(The values for the 1990s correspond with increased enforcement measures and other things, and will be addressed starting on page 32. Here we establish an historical base.)

So at issue is either 30% of all payments, or . . . how many men?

Yr.	# Owed Child Support (,000)	% Paid All	% Who Paid Part or All
1978	3424	48.9	71.7
1981	4043	46.7	71.8
1983	3995	50.5	76.0
1985	4381	48.2	74.0
1987	4840	51.3	76.1
1989	4953	51.4	75.2

Table 2: Percentage Who Comply, 1978 - 89

During the 1980s, only around half of cps having orders said they got all they claimed to be entitled to. Is this the mysterious “half of support not paid?” Is it the fairest measure of compliance? Probably the first one is more reasonable – percentage of total child support dollars due that were paid – as partial payments indicate people at least doing something. (Whether doing all they can or all they reasonably can are two other issues, and probably where both sides of the story should be equally factored. Percentage of compliance – particularly how many are actually in full compliance – is likely the area of greatest conflict of stories between cps and ncps.) All the values in Table 2 can be found in Appendix B, as provided by the Census Bureau.

Something else to consider as possibly depressing the compliance numbers besides assuming a 1:1 ratio of cps to ncps, is female ncps. Although they comprise only some 10% to 15% of ncps and have about one-third as many court orders against them as male ncps, the value of those orders is about half that for fathers, and they default at about twice the rate. So although the numbers above use the Census Bureau’s composite values for all ncps, when you look at the numbers for fathers only, compliance is slightly higher.

Still, the numbers we will use from the ’80s for future performance comparison for our three possible compliance indicators turn out to be:

Total child support owed, that is paid	70%
CPs getting all or some ordered child support	70%
CPs getting all ordered child support	50%

Table 3: Overall Compliance: 1980s

This is what the public concern has been over, and it is noticeable different from what advocates have claimed though certainly not trivial. At issue is 30% of all moneys due and 30% of all ncps. Notice that the 25% to 32% of those paying nothing resembles the number we saw among cps without orders but where even the cp knew they could not pay (24.5%).

An important inference may be drawn from the Census numbers. As a typical example, the 1991 Population Report [Current Population Reports Series P60-187] shows that 32% of cps live below the poverty line. (3,720,000 of 11,502,000.) What percentage of ncps do? Are all ncps rich at the expense of their families, living in Bermuda, or is it more reasonable to assume that people mate within their own social realm? If the number of poverty-level fathers is the same 32%, and only 24.8% of ncps are in total default, do the above figures actually show a remarkably high compliance rate?

Several sources give some indication:

•According to the 1997 National Survey of America’s Families, 2.6 million nonresident fathers [23% of the 11.1 million cases in 1997] have family incomes below the poverty line and most of them face multiple employment barriers.

[Elaine Sorensen & Chava Zibman,“Poor Dads Who Don’t Pay Child Support: Deadbeats or Disadvantaged?” Urban Institute, Series B, No. B- 30, April 2001.]

Comment: In the same report, Sorensen makes the mistake the Census Bureau avoids: balloons the number of ncp who pay nothing to 64% of all ncps by including those who simply do not pay through official legal channels or have no court order. While Sorensen has done a lot of important research and thinking about ncps, some quoted here, she frequently lapses back into “the box.” Also, her solution to any imbalance or inequity is always more bureaucracy to counter what the first one created, not correcting the first one.

• 95% of fathers having no employment problems for the past five years pay their ordered child support regularly; 81% in full and on time. Among noncustodial fathers having experienced any unemployment, one-third have stopped paying altogether.

[Judi Bartfeld and Daniel R. Meyer, “Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship Between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Normal Child Support Cases.” Social Service Review, Vol. 68, 1994.]

• “Many noncustodial fathers who do not pay child support have established new families, placing additional economic constraints on their ability to pay child support.”

[Elaine Sorensen, “Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay More Child Support?” The Urban Institute, February 1995]

• Welfare programs account for more than 30% of poor mothers´ household budgets, but only 17% of poor fathers´ budgets.

[Elaine Sorensen & Chava Zibman, “Poor Dads Who Don´t Pay Child Support: Deadbeats or Disadvantaged?” Urban Institute Report, Series B, No. B-30, April 2001.]

• “13 to 26 percent of noncustodial fathers are already poor or have extremely low incomes. Asking these noncustodial fathers to pay child support may result in shifting poverty from one group to another rather than in alleviating it. Almost 90 percent of these poor or low-income men were not working in 1990 or were working intermittently, and almost half had not completed high school.”

[Elaine Sorenson, “Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay More Child Support?” Urban Institute, February 1995]

• 80% of the homeless are men.

To what extent are we not seeing evidence of non-compliance so much as evidence of the extent of poverty in the United States, specifically that of men? If that is the case, surely very different social programs are indicated than child support enforcement.

The Urban Institute has performed the closest thing to any form of study of ncps, some of which are cited above. They are all purely statistical studies, deriving and extrapolating numbers from other statistics, which leaves them without verification and with many gaps.

Of those where child support has been sought but the ncp is not paying, how many are actually resisting (able to pay but not)? We don’t know. We can only draw inferences, as above, which are imprecise, making them susceptible to the injection of personal agendas.

Why do whatever number of ncps not pay support? We don’t know. The most obvious reason (they can’t) is only speculated upon above.

Of those not paying, how many are unaware of the whereabouts of their children or that they have any?

Of those truly resisting (can pay but don’t), how many are uncaring, and how many are particularly caring? That is, to what extent are we facing another freedom- fighter versus terrorist conundrum?

How many simply feel or have found that “visiting” four days a month, is an inadequate structure within which to be a parent, so feel no obligation to pay a stranger to raise what they have difficulty regarding as their children, to the degree they will risk jail?

How many of the very fathers who care most about being fathers – who are the most sensitive to it and the ones we should most want in their children’s lives – are we eliminating by not providing them with the same protection of their relationship that we provide mothers?

Before setting up an Office of Child Support Enforcement, and for the 27 years since, the Department of Health and Human Services, Congress, nor any branch of government has conducted any form of study on the reason for its existence: those who do not pay child support. Almost nothing is known about them, their conditions or reasons. Only the Urban Institute has tried, and only using inferential data, but their reports, dependent on government funding, are careful to flatter government motives and efforts even while explaining that what they are doing is flawed.
The Ninety Percent Solution

In every news release it can, the Census Bureau is careful to mention another statistic that consistently shows in all its reports: an 87% - 90% compliance rate among parents having joint custody. This is rarely reported by the media.

Question: Are we too fond of there being a problem to see the solution right in front of us?