Say Anything Blog

The Bismarck Tribune has an editorial today about child support collections I can get behind.  After several paragraphs of niceties about how important it is to pay your child support (wouldn’t want to run afoul of the health and human services gestapo) the Tribune gets to the meet of the issue:

...one child support enforcement program that seems to cross a line is license suspension.

It was recently reported that more than 1,000 North Dakotans have had their driver’s licenses suspended after failing to make child support payments. Another 688 people are reportedly subject to losing their licenses if they don’t comply with payment plans.

The suspension laws not only take away the privilege of driving, but also can revoke hunting, professional and occupational licenses, as well as business permits and vehicle registrations for cars, trucks, boats and airplanes (usually for those in serious arrears).

That seems foolish for a couple of reasons. First, there are plentiful methods of collection without unleashing the license police. Second, a non-custodial parent might need a driver’s license, or car registration, or professional or occupational license, or business permit to make money so they can pay child support.

Taking away such licenses seems more like punishment than a deterrent or collection method. What message does this send?

The message sent is along the lines of “you’re little more than a paycheck to cash to us.” Which isn’t exactly a great way to engender a desire for cooperation and support from the person getting nailed.  Not to mention the obvious: If you take away a person’s drivers license, and possibly even his/her occupational license, you seriously inhibit their ability to work.  Especially in a state like North Dakota with next to nothing in the way of public transportation.

If a person is already struggling to make child support payments does anyone really think that making it harder for them to go to work and earn money is going to improve the situation?  And what about putting those in child support arrears in jail?  The Tribune article doesn’t mention it, but it happens.  I’ve known people it happened to.  Now I’ll grant that the people I’ve known who were put in jail because of this weren’t making great financial choices, but putting them in jail - something that caused these people to lose their jobs - didn’t do anything to solve that problem.

Now I’ll grant that people have got to pay their child support to support their children.  There’s no getting around that.  But while we recognize that, we also need to recognize why the state engages in such draconian tactics to collect that money.

It’s not because the bureaucrats care about collecting the child support.  It’s because the the federal funding state human services bureaucrats receive is based on the amount of child support they collect.  The federal government takes the total amount of child support funds collected and distributed in a given state and then sends the health and human services bureaucrats a check worth 66% of that total.

That is why divorcing parents aren’t allowed to figure out their own child support arrangements.  That is why the human services bureaucrats go to such draconian measures to collect child support. 

It’s not about what’s best for the children or the families, its about what’s best for the health and human services agency’s bottom line.