Former NFL Star Bennie Blades Pays over $1 Million in Child Support, Yet Is Jailed for Being a 'Deadbeat Dad'
September 11th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
"Nobody who knows me well can ever say I wasn't a father to these kids."--former NFL Star Bennie Blades
"They couldn't be any closer"--the mother of one of Blades' children, describing the boy's relationship with Bennie Blades, his father
How can a man pay $1.3 million after-tax dollars in child support and then be arrested for being a "deadbeat dad"? It happened to former NFL star Bennie Blades in 2005.
Blades was working as a substitute teacher in Broward County, Florida when he was arrested. His football career was cut short by a painful injury, and even his NFL retirement pension was taken from him for child support. Blades was by all accounts a dedicated father, who was even publicly praised by his exes after his arrest.
Blades certainly made mistakes. However, the child support system and family law system often milks high-earners with transitory incomes, such as professional athletes and entertainers, leaving them with little after their careers are over. During Blades' career, he was apparently paying half his after-tax income in child support.
As Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg explains in his column below, Blades has a strong relationship with his children. His mistreatment at the hands of Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is outrageous, and symbolizes much of what's wrong with the child support system.
In the eyes of the state, Bennie Blades is a deadbeat dad
Detroit Free Press, 4/29/05
DETROIT _ On Feb. 17, at the behest of the State of Michigan, police arrested a substitute teacher at Piper High School in Sunrise, Fla.
The substitute teacher spent a week in Broward County Jail in Florida. Then he was shipped off to Michigan, almost two weeks on a bus, stopping only to eat fast food or bologna sandwiches at jails along the way.
He was not allowed to bathe or brush his teeth. As the bus transported accused criminals throughout the Eastern states, he was forced to sit all day and night, which was extremely painful because the substitute teacher has chipped vertebrae in his neck, an injury he suffered when he played safety in the NFL.
"I'm like, 'This is very humiliating,'" recalled Bennie Blades, a Detroit Lions star from 1988-96. "You had to eat with your hands shackled basically down to your lap."
When he arrived in Michigan on March 8, 19 days after his arrest, Blades was still wearing the same Old Navy blue jeans, printed blue shirt and white Pumas he was wearing when he was arrested.
Now Blades, who has been released on bail, faces two charges. The first is felony non-support for his daughter Ashley, who lives with her mother, Yolande Healey, in Southfield, Mich. At one point, Blades owed nearly $400,000 in child support for Ashley. She is one of his six children with six women.
The other charge is for failing to appear at a Jan. 7 court hearing in the case.
Mix those ingredients together: Former NFL star. Nine million dollars in career earnings. Six kids with six women. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support.
And a state attorney general who has made deadbeat dads a top priority.
And one mother who wants Blades to pay up.
And three other mothers who say he doesn't have the money.
Oh, and don't forget those six kids. Please don't forget them.
They all had something at stake that February day when the cops showed up at Piper High. And as Bennie Blades was whisked out of the school parking lot, he didn't bother asking what he should do with his car, a 1994 Honda Accord with more than 135,000 miles on it.
"We just left it there," Blades said with a laugh. "I don't think anybody is going to steal that."
When Blades was first arrested for this case, in November 2003, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox received a rousing standing ovation from himself.
"Once again let me send this message: Deadbeats that shirk their parental responsibilities risk incarceration," Cox said in a press release. "Whether that parent works in construction or played safety for the Detroit Lions, failure to pay child support will have consequences."
It is easy to paint Blades as a villain.
That is, if you're looking for villains.
But what if you are more worried about Bianca Blades, Bennie's 11-year-old daughter, who sees her dad regularly?
Read the full article here.
[Families Against Confiscatory Child Support is the national voice for fair and reasonable child support. To learn more, go to www.faccsonline.org or contact them at contact@faccsonline.org.]
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September 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
There is just no sanity in this tax & child support system. There really is no incentive to achieve, and keep achieving. Really---what is the point when most of it gets taken out of your pocket by bureaucrats with no sharp boundaries on their power?
Communism had better incentives to achievement and accomplishment.
A national commission of un-married fathers is needed to fix these problems. These laws are so grossly inconsistent with our founding ideas & values---it just make me want to heave.
A guy who boosted himself up from the bottom, all the way to the pinnacle, until grandstanding, unaccountable bureaucrats toss you back to the bottom... Just like that. A guy who is a multimillionaire reduced to working class guy driving a ten year old car.
This whole system of automatic percentages, plus these judicial add-ons, plus open-season on men who have accomplished something with their lives---needs to be re-thought. It's revolting.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
That is soooooooooo wrong
He is a good father
Someone is making an example out of him for all the real deadbeat dads
It's unfortunate
Will the 911 Parents and students be remembered on September 11th?
Like a 2 minutes of silence?
Please let Christine know at parenting tip
Thanks
September 11th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
"This whole system of automatic percentages, plus these judicial add-ons, plus open-season on men who have accomplished something with their lives---needs to be re-thought. It's revolting."
Who new democracy was about income redistribution.
I know what giving up weekends to work over time, plus a couple extra hours every night got me.
It got me put into a higher tax bracket. It was asthough my salary had increased one and a half times while all that had increased was working one and a half times more hours. I'm by no means well-off, so to see 450-500 per week go to taxes made me sick. That's more then my actual living expenses for one week. The harder you work the more you are regarded as fortunate. I guess the government signed a lot of welfare checks on my behalf. Everybodies entitled but the earner.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
This is the issue here. Why in the hell can't Blades just be content to have children with 1, perhaps 2 women, but needs to impregnate 6. What a complete moron. What an idiot. what a dou**ebag. He needed and needs to grow up, quickly. Just because you can doesn't mean you should impregnate every available woman for chrissakes. Sure he paid a lot of money. It would be considerably less if he had an ounce of common sense and intellect.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Some what true, but six women didn't mind. Why is that?
September 11th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
According to this web page: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411a.asp
"One of the most deeply rooted principles in American jurisprudence is the concept of due process of law, which is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Due process of law actually stretches back to the year 1215, when the great barons of England extracted an admission from their king that his powers over the citizenry were not unlimited but instead were limited by fundamental principles of fairness and justice. Included among the restrictions on power to which King John acceded in the Magna Carta — the Great Charter — was a prohibition against the exercise of arbitrary seizure of people or their property by government officials:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
Over the centuries, that phrase — “the law of the land” — gradually evolved into the phrase “due process of law,” the same phrase our American ancestors insisted be made part of the Constitution through the adoption of the Fifth Amendment."
Our "family" courts have no respect for the law. They are unconstitutional. The do not comply with the due process provisions prior to stripping men of property, and they need to be shut down.
That's it and that's all.
The term "Child Support" is used fraudulently by the courts and government agencies to put a spin on blood-taxes extracted from man-slaves, upon which they (courts, lawyers and various government agencies) take a large brokerage fee.
This is what is going on.
It is illegal under the U.S. Constitution.
But take heart, our completely irresponsible State governments, and the Federal Government which is failing to intervene, will be held to account by the voters.
Oh wait! I just forgot.
The majority of the voters are women. The ones supposedly being protected by these "practices".
Do the race riots of the 60s need to be replaced by male gender riots in this current decade before our government wakes up?
My guess is that this is what it will take before arrogant, incompetent, grand-standing, politically-motivated, facts-be-damned public "prosecutors" get permanently knocked off of this particular stage.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Six women didn't mind because they saw a payday. If he had a iota of common sense he would've had a vasectomy. That he didn't wear a condom was dumb enough and put everyone at risk of communicable disease. What an idiot. That he impregnated them verified he didn't use a condom and put himself at financial risk. Need I say more?
September 11th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Nope
September 12th, 2007 at 10:22 am
"You can call it irresponsible for having the kids so close together from so many different women," Blades said. "
Let's reverse the genders.
"You can call it irresponsible for having the kids so close together from so many different men...."
Would this be an infringement of a woman's reproductive freedom and her opportunity to improve her standard of living?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:28 am
If Blades didn't have any money, why did he agree to the plea deal?
"He didn't really have an option," said Blades' attorney, David Burgess. "The defense's ability to pay is no longer allowed to be argued under the statute."
Cox acknowledged that, "in order to convict him, his ability to pay doesn't matter." But he said Blades could have brought up his ability to pay at sentencing.
This is how a teacher, a former NFL player who has paid more than 1 milllion in child support, is treated by Michigan.
More than any other state, Michigan makes money through child support.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Anon Pamphleteer says:
Is this direct from the Magna Carta?
If this is a direct quote from the Magna Carta, and if our own constitutional protections reflect this--then our own solution is clear.
A family court judge must be limited to an 'adequate & necessary' child support award. If he wants to take more than that, the judge must be required to submit it as a request to a panel or jury of the father's true peers. Let them decide that impoverishment of a hard working, high achieving man is the right course.
September 12th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Michael H you are right on the money!!
There are a great deal more WOMEN out there with 5-6 kids from 3-4 different fathers then there are fathers with kids from 5-6 different women. Yet I dont see them being held accoutable. Of course not since those 6 checks make a pretty good monthly income.....both for the mother and for whatever state they live in.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Welcome to my nightmare.
And I make less then 60,000 a year.
And when I made less then 40,000 a year I paid more.
I was never behind till after 911 and haven't been able to get caught up since, gotten close once, but I'm presently back at my early 2002 level.
Mind you let's put more emphasize on the fact that the states and counties money from child support. That IS the ONLY REASON they try to collect so hard.
I'm also curious if this football player just happens to have a non MI state social security number.
Let me give everyone a hint: THE FIRST 3 DIGITS of you SOCIAL SECURITY number tells everyone want state issued you your number.
Yes I know it's a federal number, but reread the sentence before this one.
Then read the Privacy Act of 1974.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Let me add THERE IS NO COMMON SENSE to adjusting child support when a dad looses or changes his job.
The courts treat him as if he lost it on purpose to keep from having to pay child support, and so what if he does. It's not like the courts or the child's mother have a right to force the man to maintain a certain lifestyle, if so that would be SLAVERY.
ALL THE WRONGS WITH THE WAY MEN ARE TREATED IN FAMILY LAW COURTS ARE IN MY OPINION WORTH PHYSICAL REMOVAL OF ALL THOSE WHO CREATED AND ENFORCE THE THESE LAWS. THE ONLY EXCEPTION would be the police officers on the street.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
and ohh, let me ask about the Social Security number, for those of you that are nonnative state residents when you do fill out the initial form for a lawyer in their office pay careful attention how their expression changes from "what do we have here" to "this person is on their own" when they read your social security number on their form.
OH, remember this guy has lost all his money so the courts see him as an easy victim to take advantage of, you know some who can't AFFORD (Pay a lawyer money) to defend himself, and our state district attorney has had he's sights set on abusing as many men over child support since he has been in office.
If this EX football player still had money the lawyers and courts would have just run him dry till it was gone and done the same thing anyway.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Anon Pamphleteer, You couldn't be more right.
Remember when the IRS arrests and jails you for income tax evasion they charge you with filing you taxes fraudulently, not with owing them money.
It's also slavery as I mentioned above because your being forced to maintain someone else's lifestyle. Remember it's not just the child who gets the money (if the custodial parent actually uses it for the child, custodial parents have to pay utilities whether they have the children or not so I shouldn't have to reimburse the custodial parent for those kind of expenses), it's the custodial parent and the government (lookup Title IV entitlements)
and the newspapers wonder why government actually had the nerve to pass the patriot act, when there's VAWA. Title IV Entitlements, and before Homeland security there are a slew of laws that require banks to tell the government how your money is spent.