My new co-authored column, Servicemen victimized by child support system (World Net Daily, 6/27/07), discusses the recent Taron James ruling and the ways the child support enforcement system victimizes innocent citizens, particularly military personnel. Family law attorney Jeff Leving and I wrote:

"One of the reasons child support enforcement agencies are able to abuse citizens with impunity is the widespread myth that they collect $4 for every dollar they spend. The mainstream media...has failed to point out this obvious Enron-style accounting. Over $20 billion in child support is collected nationwide yearly, and only $5 billion is spent on enforcement. However, the vast majority of the $20 billion isn't collected – it's received. These are simply the payments already being made by law-abiding fathers, and will continue regardless of the cuts. The $4 myth was created by incorrectly counterposing total collections with expenditures on enforcement. Research shows that child support enforcement funds are often frittered away in misguided attempts to collect artificially inflated paper arrearages from low-income men who couldn't possibly pay them.

"In 1998, Congress held extensive hearings on the myriad abuses committed by the Internal Revenue Service against law-abiding citizens. What few realize is that there are a similar number of men, fathers and families who have been victims of the same types of abuses by child support enforcement agencies. Because federal funding helps shape the way child support enforcement bureaucracies operate, similar hearings are needed to investigate and remedy these abuses."

Read the column here. To write a Letter to the Editor of World Net Daily, click here.

To learn more about the Taron James case, click here. Los Angeles attorney Marc Angelucci represented Taron James and Taron was eventually able to get his child support order set aside under AB 252, the California Paternity Fraud bill.

California is one of the few states to have meaningfully addressed the military reservists/child support issue mentioned above. In 2005, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1082, which helps resolve the child support nightmare many mobilized reservists face.  The bill was shepherded through the legislature by Michael Robinson and the California Alliance for Families and Children, and many of you wrote letters and made phone calls in support of the bill. To learn more, click here. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Family Law, Child Support/Child Support Enforcement, Fathers' Rights/Noncustodial parents' rights, Men's rights, Bills/Initiatives, Elections, Politics, Court Cases. You can trackback from your own site.