Los Angeles, CA–D.M., a founding father of the private child support industry, often posts on my blog. He recently sent me a description of his experiences which he would like my readers to see.
Private Child Support Industry Leader’s Perspective for GlennSacks.com Readers
A few years ago I retired after spending about over a decade in the child support industry, being one of the founding fathers of the private child support industry. That of course makes me an instant enemy of your contributors, and few, if any, would really care what I think or believe.
At one point, we audited all of our active cases – something like 475 at the time. The “average” child support obligation was $250 per month for one child, $350 for two children. Hardly excessive by any means.
The average arrearage was in excess of $8,000 before interest was added.
63% of our clients had not remarried. 74% of the NCP’s had remarried.
17% of the NCPs that we were able to contact, claimed that they were not paying because they were being denied visitation. In less than 1% of the cases this was true. With the remaining 16% we facilitated visitation again. The longest that the visitation lasted was 4.7 months. In every case, the NCP quit the visitation because it was too much of a burden on him.
Overall, our successful collection rate was in the neighborhood of 83%. The unsuccessful collections were people that we couldn’t find or who simply would not pay no matter what. All that we were able to secure collections from – 83% – were able to pay at least the minimum amount. What precluded them paying more was other financial obligations. Of course, it should also be noted that 93% of these people all had bad credit, primarily from defaulting on things like telephones, rent, cars, trucks, etc. From a credit standpoint, they were simply irresponsible. Their job histories also demonstrated that. Many would quit a job when the wage withholding orders were being honored. Certainly not “deadbroke” as some activists claim.
John Murtari, for example, claims to be broke – and that he can’t afford to pay child support. Of course, his life style would indicate otherwise – his frequent trips for visitation, one trip to Italy, taking his mother for visitation, and paying himself as owner of a company less than his employees. His one minor redeeming quality is that he does at least, pay $50 a month in child support. Does he have an excuse for not paying child support? Yes, a very weak one. What weakens his position is that he could make an effort and pay both child support and visit his son. What further weakens his position is that he is once again in jail, because of his frequent attempts to “force” Senator Clinton to meet with him and his “group” which seemingly only exists on paper / Internet.
Murtari will be in jail until his trial on 31 March. As is his style, which does fall into what I consider “deadbeat mentality,” he wants the court to move up his trial date so he can see his son for spring break. Everyone should make sacrifices for him, and of course the argument is that it would be in the best interests of his son, but he is unwilling to make any sacrifices.
The statistics that we evaluated are by no means indicative of a national picture. We did not accept cases of welfare recipients, unless the amount owed was very small. The reason was two fold: (1) economical – we could not charge for collections that went to the state and (2) if the mother was on welfare, typically, though by no means all cases, the father would be basically broke himself due to socio-economic situations. However, other private agencies that we spoke to were reporting similar experiences and statistics.
No one knows if shared custody would have alleviated the problems. It probably would not have due to the personalities of the parents. But, there is no way to know that because we were looking at people after the fact, and when a significant amount of money was at stake.