The child support enforcement laws that have been enacted in Alabama in the past few years are unfair to non-custodial parents (NCP’s) and their children. A primary difficulty with these laws is their inflexibility and an example is the 200 child support warrants issued in Colbert County, Alabama a few months ago. There’s no flexibility even during a global pandemic and as things opened back up Alabama DHR sent out warrants. This is all done for greed in the aggressive & oppressive money-making honey pot scheme of Title IV-D & E Funding. In Alabama’s foaming at the mouth for the matching funding (they get $5.63 for every dollar they set in a child support case) families are destroyed but they also create social situations that create generations of victims for their profit.
Due to any number of circumstances such as Covid-19 non-custodial parents may find their earnings decreased due to lay-off, injury, illness, disability, or any other reason. But the mechanism for modification of support orders is very slow to respond. In fact, as is often the case NCP’s are faced with huge arrears due to their inability to make full payment of child support for months at a time, once there’s an arrear, it can not by law, be modified. No modification based on real human life experiences is clearly unjust and is just another example of the greed that emanates out of the Alabama Department of Human Resources. Here’s another example of the greed built into the system: The 5.9 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits payable to more than 64 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2022 but those on Social Security who owe back child support (arrears) are already receiving letters of child support increases. This is the perfect example of Alabama DHR greed: DHR will take the COLA (in some cases the people’s child support increase was more than the COLA) and then receive from Social Security Title IV-D matching Funding at $5.63 for every dollar the Social Security has given a COLA to. This is totally corrupt and is the type of thing that’s breaking social security. Social Security is not going broke it’s being robbed by greed.
Under current law, NCP’s who fall behind in their child support payments can be judged criminals, even felons, and imprisoned. If NCP’s fall behind in the court-ordered support payments, they can lose their driver’s license, in addition to their professional license to conduct business and they can also be denied a passport. Measures to extract the maximum possible amount of money from non-custodial parents have become increasingly extreme and often violate the basic principle of human dignity and privacy upon which this country says it stands for. Here’s another example of Alabama’s horrible Department of Human Resources: At a meeting in Montgomery, Alabama with 2-3 state supreme justices there a DHR employee when speaking joked about a situation where the life insurance policy of the person owing child support was seized. Alabama Department Human Resources actions scream out of an outside federal investigation that reaches down into the local offices.
Some states post pictures and biographies of parents with outstanding balances on the internet in an attempt to humiliate the non-custodial parent into compliance. Millions are being spent developing linked computer systems and databases in order to locate and seize the assets of so-called “deadbeat parents,” when in fact the primary reason that most NCP’s (non-custodial parents) fall behind in their child support is an inability to pay. Elected officials need to debate if there’s a difference in being “dead broke” or “dead beat” and the implications of both. I and others believe that these measures all violate the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of thousands of Non-Custodial Parents across Alabama. The specific rights violated include The Right To Equal Protection, Due Process, The Prohibition Against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, and the Prohibition Against Arbitrary Fines & Penalties.
What Alabama Department of Human Resources is beneath humanity and these new measures simply will not work for the following reasons:
- Criminalizing parents can’t be good for the children. It drives a wedge between the parent and the child and it is not only unfair to the parent but it may severely damage the self-esteem of the child.
- The new laws will clog the court system
- They will result in ever-increasing numbers of NCP’s withdrawing from participation in their children’s lives.
- They will result in ever-increasing numbers of NCP’s opting out of the mainstream.
- They will result in parents being sent to prison simply for experiencing financial hardships and falling behind in support payments.
- They will increase divisiveness in our society.
- They will further reduce our civil liberties.