Deadbeat or dead broke?

[lumberjack_jeff]

http://www.reentry.net/ny/library/attachment.105547

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Deadbeat or Dead broke? Solangel Maldonado, UC Davis[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Millions of children are growing up without their fathers. Many of these children “lost” their fathers when their parents separated or divorced, but many others never even lived with them. Although both divorced and never married fathers disengage from their children at alarmingly high rates, men who were never married to their children’s mothers are even less likely to be involved in their children’s upbringing or to share a close relationship with them. They are also less likely to pay child support and, according to policymakers, more likely to be African-American.
Approximately seventy percent of African-American children, as compared to twenty-three percent of white children, are born to never married women. For decades, government officials have focused on paternal absence in African-American families, treating fatherlessness . . . as a distinctly Black problem,” and blaming absent fathers for many of the social ills plaguing African-American communities poverty, teen pregnancy, high delinquency and incarceration rates, poor academic performance, and idleness.
Although social science research suggests that children raised in two parent homes do better than children raised in single-parent homes, recent studies have found that many of the negative effects associated with growing up in a single parent family can be reduced by nonresident fathers’ significant involvement with their children. Children with involved nonresident fathers perform better academically and have higher self-esteem and fewer social and behavioral problems than children who have little contact with their fathers.8 This is good news for African-American children because recent studies have found that lowincome, never married African-American nonresident fathers are more involved with their children than are nonresident fathers of other races. According to policymakers, however, African-American fathers are the most absent; abandoning their children at disproportionately high rates and never looking back. Why are policymakers unaware of the higher rate of paternal involvement amongst low-income, nonresident African-American fathers? Because, when measuring responsible fatherhood, only formal child support payments count.
Many of the social problems in African-American communities are the result of poverty. African-American children are disproportionately poor and rarely receive child support, depending instead on public assistance for their financial needs. Thus, it is not surprising that policymakers have aggressively pursued African-American “deadbeat” fathers who do not pay child support. Pursuing these fathers, however, has presented many challenges because most are poor themselves and the majority are unemployed. Although child support enforcement agencies and community organizations have created programs to help these fathers obtain stable, well-paying jobs, most participating fathers did not find steady jobs or stay employed long enough to significantly increase their child support payment frequency or amounts. However, some participating fathers did increase their level of contact and involvement with their children. That is the focus of this Article: how can the law encourage never married poor fathers, the majority of whom are African-American, to be involved in their children’s lives?
Although the majority of poor, nonresident African-American fathers do not pay child support, many make in-kind and nonfinancial contributions to their children. Child support enforcement officials have not recognized these contributions, crediting only formal child support payments. As a result, poor, African-American fathers are perceived as greater deadbeats and as less involved in their children’s upbringing than other fathers. This failure to recognize informal contributions may drive poor fathers away and make it more difficult for them to maintain relationships with their children. I propose that the law recognize all of the contributions poor nonresident fathers make to their children and credit them against formal child support obligations. This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I examines the literature suggesting that paternal involvement benefits children even when their fathers do not live with them. Part II looks at the informal contributions poor, nonresident African-American fathers make to their children and critiques policymakers’ failure to recognize these contributions. Part III explores how the law can encourage poor nonresident fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives by redefining child support to include informal and nonfinancial contributions.


More at the link (pdf).

The insurmountable debt applied to young fathers provides a huge barrier to the value of seeking and accepting legitimate employment. The alternative is illegal employment and a consequent poor relationship with the police.

Here's another great link on the same topic; counterproductive policy, in the city of Baltimore.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/a-dead-broke-notdeadbeatabaltimorerethinkswelfarepolicy.html

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]From Al Jazeera[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]When Charlotte applied for additional benefits from Maryland's Department of Human Resources (DHR), the state agency that administers TANF and other welfare programs, she lied about being married so that Darnell's income would not be considered in her application. At the same time, she had to register Darnell as the father of her new baby with a second DHR agency, the Child Support Enforcement Administration, in order to qualify for additional cash assistance.

In many states, including Maryland, the parent seeking assistance — typically the mother — must identify the other parent to the child-support agency so it can begin to collect payments owed to the state. (Darnell, for example, owed about $400 each month.) This is intended to offset the costs of food stamps and other aid the state pays out. Missed payments accrue in arrears. The state can collect that money by garnishing wages, intercepting tax refunds, suspending drivers’ or professional licenses and other measures. (A 2012 Maryland law, however, now stops child-support debt from accumulating when parents in arrears are in prison.)

Thus, a potential conflict was introduced into Charlotte and Darnell's relationship: the benefits she gained as a result of his vulnerability to the state.

"I always thought that was crazy," Darnell says. "We shouldn't have to say we were separated to get help. If anything, they should have helped us stay together. They are saying they want the father involved but won't help you if the father is involved. That is backwards."

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. More from the Al-Jazeera link

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Child support debt[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]In Baltimore, where fathers are already in short supply, in part due to high incarceration rates, CFUF seeks to help couples stay together or at least effectively raise their children together. The organization offers a mix of programs that focus on job training, relationship-skills building, parenting and financial counseling. The group also works with men who owe child support to craft with DHR a viable payment plan, including forgiving or alleviating arrears. Last year, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation to expand CAT’s program that, starting this month, could put the state at the forefront of potentially innovative policy.

"It holds tremendous promise," says Thomasina Hiers, deputy secretary of programs at the Maryland Department of Human Resources. "If it works, it will redefine policy."

In four Baltimore ZIP codes where CFUF works, parents owe a total of $111 million in child-support arrears. That's about a quarter of the city's total. In those ZIP codes, DHR jointly with CFUF identified 4,642 cases (9.4 percent of the total caseload for the city) in which individuals owe an average of about $130 per month. In 68 percent of those cases, DHR has never received a single payment.

But while the measures the state can take to recover that money are intended for deadbeat dads, men caught up in the system in inner-city Baltimore are often dead broke. DHR officials say those in arrears are mostly parents who would pay but cannot — the unemployed, underemployed and incarcerated — not those who can pay but won't.

"It takes a four-legged stool to get out of this," said Peter Beilenson, who served as Baltimore's health commissioner from 1992 to 2005. The community needs "decent housing; public schools that can turn out kids ready for college; access to healthy homes (lead-paint-free), healthy food and health care; livable-wage jobs in the community. None of those occur in huge swaths of Baltimore city."

In addition to discouraging low-income fathers from entering the job market because their wages can be garnished, child-support debt can ultimately alienate the father from the mother — then from his child — rather than giving him an incentive to be an active participant in the child's life.