CHILD SUPPORT IN NORTH CAROLINA: A BROKEN AND ABUSED SYSTEM
 

The Child Support System in North Carolina is a badly abused and broken system that applies the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines in a highly punitive manner through abuses

ex-husbands increased 42%. Lenore Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (1985). According to some commentators, Weitzman's numbers may be overestimated. See, e.g., Susan Faludi, Backlash (1991). However, the fact that women's and children's standard of living declines dramatically has been verified by other studies. See, e.g., R. Weiss, The Impact of Marital Dissolution on Income and Consumption in Single-Parent Households, 46 J. Marriage & Fam. 115, 115-27 (Feb., 1984). A census report suggests that family income available to children declined by about 37% following a parental separation (21% when adjusted for family size) and that a year later family income was only 69%-70% of the level prior to disruption. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Family Disruption and Economic Hardship: The Short-Run Picture for Children (Current Population Reports Series P-70, No. 23, 1991).

20 Lisa Stamm, Section 1983 and Title IV-D of the Social Security Act: In Pursuit of Improved Child Support Enforcement, 60 U. Cin. L. Rev. 221, 222 (1991).

21 See, e.g., David T. Ellwood, Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family (1988) [hereinafter Ellwood]; National Commission on Children, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American Agenda for Children and Families (1991);

Peter B. Edelman, Toward a Comprehensive Antipoverty Strategy: Getting Beyond the Silver Bullet, 81 Geo. L.J. 5 (1993). Paul K. Legler, The Coming Revolution in Child Support Policy: Implications of the 1996 Welfare Act, 30

Fam. L.Q. 519, 563 (1996).

by support enforcement agents. Although the guidelines may reflect some degree of similarity to other jurisdictions as mandated by Title IV-D, they are highly subjective at the trial court level.22

In many cases for divorce, the party who receives primary physical custody of the minor children will often times defer from seeking alimony or support from their spouse because their child support is enough to sustain both the parent and the child. This however, this is not the purpose or the intention of child support.23 The application of the child support guidelines are not equitable and are in fact very punitive in nature because often times, the person with “primary”

or sole custody is only in that position because of the non-custodial parents’ need to work and support the child.24 What effectively happens is that because the guidelines are so excessive in awarding support, the non-custodial parents who actually pay their support frequently seek additional employment to give themselves a livable wage after they pay. It is at this point that the enforcement agents begin probing for “changed circumstances” to increase the support amount.

In one recent case my firm worked on, the custodial parent sent out a mass Facebook™ posting on the eve of her three-year review, to all of her friends boasting that once her support amount is increased, everyone in her house (four people other than the child) were getting brand new IPhones. In another recent case, a custodial mother testified that her support amount is not fair and should be increased because her ex-husband was living in a large home and had bought water-park passes for the children for their summer visit.

In many instances where the parents are not paying support, the price of their support amount is simply too much for many of them to pay and live on. Although this is a factor that the

 

22 See e.g., Beamer v. Beamer, 169 N.C. App. 594 (2005), and 10A N.C. Index 4th Divorce and Separation § 481.

23  See Supra, Note 14 & 15.

24 See Supra, Note 15.

courts can consider,25 most often the support agent’s responses are, “well you should have thought about that before you had a kid.”

    Many of these enormous support amounts go back to the origins of the IV-D system that were developed so that women could get back at their male oppressors who historically earned more than them.26 This addresses the support amounts that Courts review and grant but does not cover the support orders that are entered by consent through the Gestapo bully tactics employed by child support agents.  Recently, my firm represented a father who had been paying his child support for more than a year since its last modification. In December of 2013, he was contacted and “commanded” to provide proof of, “any and all income earned by him in the past month” because the “petitioner” had requested an increase in support. He was told that if he did not do as directed, that he would be charged and jailed for “non-compliance.” Similarly to our misguided criminal clients who believe that they have to help the police convict them, child support enforcement agents use coercive tactics to get non-custodial parents to agree to egregious child support awards well in excess of the guidelines. In this case, our firm sent the agent a simple letter, stating that the case was not eligible for review and that if the agency had anything that rose to the level of a material change in circumstances under the law27  that they were to file the proper  motion for modification and discovery request just like anyone else. Within two weeks our office and our client received a letterhead from the agency stating that they had no grounds for seeking the modification and that the case was closed.

25 N.C.G.S.A. §§ 110-129(7), 110-136.3, 110-136.4(b). Guilford County By and Through its Child Support Enforcement Office ex rel. Norwood v. Davis, 629 S.E.2d 178 (N.C. Ct. App. 2006), and 23 N.C. Index 4th Parent and Child § 59.

26 See, Note 3.

The court system is also choked with petitions and motions that bog down our court system, which drain our taxpayer funds, and fill our jails. In many cases, these issues are caused by the abuses of support agencies, petitioners, and the guidelines in general. When a child support agent abuses their authority and coerces a consent order from a non-custodial parent for more than what the guidelines specify, the inevitable refusal or inability of the respondent to pay the support amount is the responsibility of that support agent.

    Similar to police officers who abuse their authority to coerce admissions from suspects or perform unlawful searches and seizures of property, child support agents should not be rewarded for their abuses. Many times, police officers who are willing to “bend” the constitutional protections afforded to citizens, do so under the justification that they are fighting crime. Similarly, one child support agent interviewed for this article (who will remain unnamed) claimed that she often uses “reasonable deception” because she is helping women “rise above” being abused by men. It is this subjective application of the guidelines is the crux of most of the problems within the IV-D child support system.

    Lastly, parents who are incarcerated for unrelated offenses are often crippled upon release from prison by being both a convict and having enormous arrears hanging over them. This usually results in re-entry for civil non-support or the custodial parent refusing visitation with the children. The problem with the separation of the child support system from the civil division is that lay-parents are often under the misguided belief that child support is consideration for visitation.28   This creates an unending vicious cycle that ultimately hurts the children both emotionally and substantively, but there is an alternative.