Matt Welch writes about one aspect of America's "deadbeat dads" laws, where men who have utterly no connection with a welfare recipient or her children are, due to mere similarity of name, assigned fatherhood status and dunned to poverty (and worse) by a system that makes a travesty of "due process."
From personal connections to others trapped up in this system, I know that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Becoming a "deadbeat dad" is trivially easy -- sometimes all it takes is the assertion by the mother that child support has not been received, proof be damned. And once the system has its hooks in, there is very little to do but pay up. Which can be difficult for a minimum wage worker hit with a $30,000 bill accumulating at 12%, who now no longer can legally drive, work at a licensed profession (e.g. bartender, barber), is unbondable (security guard, bank clerk), and cannot appeal in any effective way. No lawyer is going to take such a hopeless case anyway, especially with so little chance of payment. Bankruptcy is not even an option -- specifically excluded. Any job they do get can be garnished at high rates, which drives them into the undergound economy. Illegal immigrants in their own country, deprived of nearly every priviledge of citizenship, including a passport.
This system needs massive reform. It is so stacked against the father (or alleged father) that there is no due process. Calling it debtor's prison is too kind -- you could appeal from that. In this system, state judges have no power to alter a judgement in many cases. And there is little mistake why it is the way it is -- see this quote from Sheila Kuehl, feminazi from Santa Monica:
"What makes a father?" California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) said in an August 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she was voting against [former CA State Senator] Rod Wright's latest reform bill. "This bill says the donation of genetic material makes a father. I don't agree."Welch concludes with this:
Kuehl, a former family law attorney who cosponsored a law that reworked California's child support system in 1999, has been the single biggest opponent of paternity-related reform bills in the state....
Wright, who considers Kuehl a friend, says he tried several times to sway her with individual stories of innocent victims who'd been trampled by the current system. "Sheila said to me one day in a hearing room: 'You know, I understand that, through the convergence of science and thousand-year-old common law, we have to work toward a kind of balance. And I side with the kids; I don't really care about this guy.'" Wright chalks it up to the prevailing political winds. "If this was a case where women could be charged similarly," he says, "Sheila would be all over this like a cheap suit. It's really a case where it becomes a guy vs. a child. So it's like, 'Well, screw the guy.'"
But as long as state and federal laws remain as they are -- with low evidentiary thresholds for issuing paternity complaints, no proof of service required, the presumption of guilt in default cases, a series of short legal deadlines beyond which paternity becomes extremely difficult to challenge, and financial incentive for the government to keep naming dads and extracting money -- these cases will continue to come up. "I can see how so many men could be totally screwed right now," Pierce says. "You know, I was educated, I had a good job, I'd never been involved with the cops before, I had nothing to fear, nothing to run from. But still, I got tied into it....I can see where this stuff could create many victims."Via Instapundit Posted by Kevin Murphy at February 3, 2004 09:10 AM | TrackBack