www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Chief;
I do not think it is the government's job to impose morality but..when the Supreme Court of our great nation declared it one's fundemental right to procreate, and we seem to have a country decreasingly interested in personal responsibility, education, family, and respect (family was not intended to include "family values" a la Dan Quale), I applaud the government getting involved in collecting judgments ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction for the maintenance and support of Ch*ldren.
I apologize to those men whose Ch*ld support funds their Ch*ld's mother's drinking, drug use, vacation with new boyfriend, etc.. I guess the only answer to that is aggressive litigation to enjoin the woman from spending the funds in said fashion or employing an investigator and seeking sole custody in court. But when I recently read that Dog the Bounty Hunter has 12 Ch*ldren by several women (not saying he has outstanding Ch*ld support issues) I said enough is enough.
Just my thoughts.

I do not think it is a question of enforcing morality. What the government is doing is enforcing orders of the court.

If you violate a court order they usual give you some jail time. In enforcing Ch*ld support orders it would be counter productive to put the person in jail. They can not earn a living in jail and therefore, in most cases, they would be unable to pay the back support and maintain the payments that come due.

It is kind of like the old days when they stopped jailing people for being behind in debt payments. They realized a man in jail could never pay his debt so it was foolish to have debtors prisons.

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

ChiefTP,

If it is the sentiment of the guys on the board that it is not the government's job to impose morality, then I must respectfully disagree. IMO, most (if not all) laws reflect to a greater or lesser extent moral choices. Prohibitions against theft, assault, murder, late term abortion, molestation; vice laws, anti discrimination laws, etc, all, at their core, have moral underpinnings. Additionally, tax and other economic laws have moral underpinnings. The recent legal brouhaha involving Michael Vick certainly reflects changing moral values concerning animals. The Ten Commandments, the Torah, the Code of Hammurabi, writings by philosophers old and new, etc., have shaped our attitudes and laws.

The government does enforce morality. We usually complain about it when the moral choices inherent in the laws are at odds with our own.

Ciaociao

During the custody battle I got 2 court orders against my K*ds mom to recieve a small amount of Ch*ld support. I wasnt to concerned with the money because it was so little it wouldnt make a difference. I just wanted the crazy bitch out of our life forever. If I had decided to persue the money from her it would just be more drama and a reason for the bitch to be in our lives.

California is just to idealistic these days, not quite enough pragmatism as there should be. It would be nice to do that for all those K*ds, but in reality the money isnt there for that type of volume. Maybe the Bill gates foundation could throw a few bucks that way instead of towards malaria in Africa.

Can't the K*ds make some type of statement to the State or the local County Govt.? It might take awhile but definetely worth pursuing. Or maybe even figure out a way to send only half direct and the other half into a trust fund for when the K*ds are of age. That's horrible!

ID was right to question partyanimal's original statement or at least in who it was from. Consider the source. In the post right before that PA was spouting off about feminazis and how women should never have been given the right to vote. Maybe he was only joking but it sounds to me like he's been listening to a little too much Tom Leykus, which is probably where he heard about it.

I decided to do a little research myself. I don't know if this is what he was really talking about but it was the only semi-similar thing I could find and it presents the story in very different terms http://www.glennsacks.com/california_child_support.htm

According to this commentator, the basis for this law was not so unsound. According to him the rationale not about whether "innocent Ch*ldren should not suffer based on the acts of their parents." It was actually much more pragmatic. Under the current system, CS payments continue to accrue while parents are sent to jail, often without their even being aware of it. When they get out they frequently find that they owe 10's of thousands of dollars in arrearages, interest and penalties. When the state then tries to enforce the CS requirements on these guys fresh out of prison and struggling to reintegrate with society, it puts just so much more pressure on them to return to a live of crime to come up with the money to catch up. Forgetting about the cost of the resulting crime to their victims and the state of California, when they get caught and return to prison not only can they once again no longer make any payments but they cost the state more than $21,000/yr to incarcerate.

This proposed new law is NOT about making their payments for them. What it would do is acknowledge the change in circumstance represented by their incarceration and thus stop additional debt from accruing on them while they're locked away and unable to earn anything towards paying it off. Then when they get out they just owe whatever they might have been behind when they went in. The law is actually modeled after a similar law in North Carolina, hardly a bastion of radicalism.

To quote the article: "it makes no sense to risk pushing ex-convicts back into crime in order to collect Ch*ld support money which many low-income former prisoners will never be able to pay anyway" and "Ch*ld support is supposed to be based on income and the ability to pay. If you don't and can't have an income, Ch*ld support should reflect that."

You guys could come up with all the hard luck horror stories you want on either side of the argument. Yes, there are deadbeat dads who have the money but fail to make their payments while their ex and their K*ds live on food stamps. And yes, there are ex-wives that misspend the CS money they get on inappropriate things while the fathers struggle to come up with the cash. I can even understand why, when facing the latter situation, an otherwise responsible father would feel he was getting the shaft and not want to pay. But neither of these situations have anything to do with the simple fact that if a parent has the means, they have the responsibility of paying what is required of them to support the Ch*ldren they fathered. It doesn't matter whether they feel the mother is misspending that money. If that is the case, or they really don't have the means to pay or the settlement was in any way unfair, they need to resolve that in court and not make the determination themselves.

This is not about enforcing morality. Yes, there is a moral basis in most laws. But there is a difference between laws that relate to moral rules like thou should not kill, or thou should be able to let your innocent Ch*ldren suffer because you don't want to take responsibility for your actions (okay I made that one up) and moral laws limiting the actions of consenting adults that do no harm to anyone else.

One other quick comment:I agree that there is a big difference between cracking down on deadbeat dads spending money on elective luxuries like foreign trips and taking away their ability to earn a livelihodd and make their payments by taking away their driver's licenses. But I would add to Mia2Ewr comments here: WOMEN should exercise due care when engaged in fornication with guys who clearly are unprepared for the possibility of getting the female pregnant. There are way too many people out there, both men and women, having too many K*ds when they can't even support the ones they have now.