by Joseph Hazelbaker

Created on: April 08, 2008

Parents, who are required to pay child support, whether they are the father or the mother, should face the possibility of confinement if they refuse to meet their obligations without good reason. Thus, the answer to this question is "yes", but should include "deadbeat moms" as well as "deadbeat dads".

Child support is a legal obligation established by law and ordered, after careful consideration of numerous factors, by courts. Those considerations include both the requirements of the child as well as the resources of the parent who is facing a potential child support order.

Once support is ordered, the parent faced with a support obligation has the ability to challenge both the obligation itself and the amount imposed. In addition, there are mechanisms for the child support obligation to be modified at a later date under certain circumstances when the parent is unable to pay. Thus, a parent who feels they have been treated unfairly by a court and/or who experiences a significant change in circumstances (such as the loss of employment), can seek to have the support obligation changed.

Thus, while there are certainly a few instances of improper or unfair support orders, the far majority of those who reach "deadbeat" status obtain that label not because they shouldn't have been required to pay, but because they refuse to.

American courts have always had the power to compel compliance with their orders. Child support obligations are no different. To be meaningful, a court's order must have a drastic penalty as a last resort. Institutional confinement, while drastic, is the most powerful tool in a court's toolbox.

Having been a court appointed attorney charged with representing parents who were facing child support contempt charges, I have experienced the process first hand. In my experience, innocent parents were not being thrown in the slammer for missing a payment or two as some opponents suggest. In fact, I have never had a client incarcerated for child support contempt and can recall no such case during my time as a court-appointed attorney.

In my experience, parents fail to pay child support for three main reasons: 1) they don't know or understand that they have the obligation, 2) the have difficulty paying, procrastinate, fall too far behind to catch up, become discouraged, and give up or 3) they are opposed to the obligation in principal and refuse to obey it.

In the cases of #1 and #2, the system is set up to give parents opportunities to come into compliance.

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