Enforcement Ignored, Underpowered

“The more deadbeat this dad is, the more our government lets him golf.” Verona Feske, single mom

Nothing makes the telephone ring more than columns about deadbeat dads. Depending on one’s perspective, these men are despised, tolerated or victimized.

Some are irresponsible creeps who drive sports cars, spend every other afternoon at the driving range and whine about their court-ordered payments while evading their paternal responsibilities.

Others steam over increased support payments in garage apartments, where they live off pork and beans out of the can and challenge columnists to “tell the other side of the deadbeat dad story.”

A father isn’t a deadbeat if he simply can’t pay the bill. A man isn’t a deadbeat when the mother takes off, won’t reveal the child’s whereabouts and then sends the district attorney after him 10 years later, which really does happen.

A deadbeat works under the table to hide his earnings. He moves from place to place - and often from state to state - so officials can’t garnishee his wages. Notice the word “man” isn’t in this paragraph. A deadbeat who lets his children do without to stick it to his ex isn’t a man.

That said, what I really want to get at is where deadbeats - the real ones - fit into visions of welfare reform. Their presence in talks has been the same vague existence many have in their kids’ lives.

Earlier this week, papers up and down the state reported on the California Legislature’s historic overhaul of the state’s welfare system. Called CalWORKs, the plan aims to move 500,000 aid recipients into the work force in California. If signed by Gov. Pete Wilson, it would limit recipients to two years at a time within the federal five-year lifetime limit.

Poor women would meet work requirements in exchange for aid; community service jobs would go to those who can’t find jobs. There’s a whole lot more; whole forests will have been cleared before the intricacies of the law are explained.

Despite this, I’ve read too little about how deadbeat parents fit into ending welfare as we know it, which is strange, given the prominent role non-collection plays in a family’s poverty.

The new law provides no new funds for county district attorneys charged with the actual enforcement of payments. In Sacramento County, the district attorney monthly receives 40,000 child support-related calls, a number sure to increase once families’ aid runs out.

You often read that California children are owed more than $7.5 billion in back child support from noncustodial parents who’ve failed to meet their obligations. Nationwide, regular payments are collected in only 18 percent of all cases.

While California’s uncollected $7.5 billion is substantial, it represents all money not collected over the past 20 years plus interest, explained Leslie Frye, chief of the state Office of Child Support.

She pointed out that California counties collected 14.5 percent more in child support in the fiscal year ending June 30 than in the preceding year.

Frye credits new enforcement tools such as restrictions on business, professional and recreational licenses for support scofflaws. Signing as the father on a birth certificate now requires a paternity declaration. Utility companies provide addresses of missing parents. “Every time we get a new law, we’re targeting a new population of parents,” she said.

None of it is impressive enough for advocates who say that penalizing mothers and children misses the point.

“Everyone talks about welfare-to-work, but no one is talking about why families turn to welfare in the first place,” said Nora O’Brien of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support. At least 25 percent of poor kids would be lifted out of poverty if support payments were met.

The much-discussed subject of maternal “cooperation” - mothers telling authorities who and where the father is and losing some aid if they won’t - is hardly a worthy issue, O’Brien said. She said 91 percent of women cooperate and 66 percent provide a work address as well.

Leora Gershenzon of the National Center for Youth Law in San Francisco said child poverty will never be reduced unless support enforcement is increased.

“I don’t care how hard they try. We have a broken system,” O’Brien agreed. “This definitely deserved to be more of an issue in the welfare talks. The public needs to understand that children are living in poverty due to nonsupport.”

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service