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DAY 1
System lets 47,782 deadbeats slide without paying40 percent of parents skirting responsibility
The face of Patrick Marshall was plastered in post offices and courts across Massachusetts, with wild west-like wanted posters listing him as one of the state’s worst deadbeat dads. On Tuesday night, six months after the posters were released, authorities found Marshall 50 miles away in Nashua, N.H. Now they want to drag him back to Massachusetts to reclaim the $145,000 he allegedly owes in child support. It’s the kind of story state officials in charge of child support enforcement like to tout to show they’re doing their job. But a Patriot Ledger investigation shows that for every high profile case like Marshall’s, 47,782 other deadbeats get by without paying, leaving mothers and taxpayers to pick up the tab, and children at the center of agonizing court battles that can drag on for years. Together, Massachusetts deadbeats owe their kids a whopping $1.3 billion. And kids aren’t the only ones the system is failing. Taxpayers chip in an estimated $304 million a year in welfare benefits to help support deadbeats’ children and $52 million a year trying to get the delinquent parents to pay. The problem, parents say, is a state agency that is overburdened, understaffed and, by all accounts, difficult to deal with. Fathers trying to pay what they owe say the state has mishandled paperwork and misdirected money, allegations that a 2000 State Auditor’s report supports. Mothers say the agency’s phone lines are constantly busy, that they are left on hold for as long as two hours, and when they do connect with someone, it is never the same person twice. They hear promises but see few results. Mary Quinn’s story is a case in point. For five years after her husband disappeared, she counted on the state to find him and shake some cash out of his pockets to help feed their two babies. Quinn, who was on welfare, called the state Department of Revenue every month to make sure caseworkers were looking for him. Then she heard about a private search company that would attempt to find a missing person for $10. On a whim, she wrote a check. Within a month, the company did what the state had been unable to do in five years: It located her ex-husband’s address. Now Quinn, who lives in Quincy, wonders whether the state was looking for her ex-husband at all. “I believe for five years the state didn’t do anything,” she said. Lost in the system Mothers such as Quinn say the state is too slow to find deadbeats - 24,000 are still missing - and just as slow to take action against them. Judges, they say, give deadbeats too many chances to skate in and out of court on empty promises. Only about 700, or 14 percent, of the 5,100 deadbeats who are ordered to appear in court on contempt charges are sent to jail each year, and even fewer actually serve time. Some say the state simply has more cases than it can handle:
Patrick McDermott, register of probate for Norfolk County, who tracks family court cases, said the Department of Revenue is “wholeheartedly understaffed,” and that allows deadbeats to slip through the cracks. “They can garnish wages and do their searches with technology, but you can find your way through the system,” he said. “You can get paid under the table, not file tax returns, you can change your name and shun your responsibility, and there’s no remedy to fix that right now.” Critics say the state has plenty of options to collect back child support, but frequently fails to follow through. For example, lawmakers in 1994 gave the Department of Revenue the right to revoke car registrations for deadbeats, but the department took away only 227 registrations in a decade. The state also let its 10 Most Wanted deadbeat poster lapse for 15 months and only reinstated it when lawmakers complained. Nancy Kennery, a Randolph mother, said state caseworkers have told her they would intercept her ex-husband’s tax refund and suspend his carpentry license, but have not done either. “They tell you they’re going to get money for you, but as soon as you’re off the phone, you feel like you’re stuffed in a file,” said Kennery, 45, whose ex-husband owes her $5,600. Too many cases State officials say they have doubled child support collections in the past decade and have recovered $1.1 billion in welfare costs since 1987. And they point out that Massachusetts’ 61 percent collection rate in fiscal 2003 was better than the national average of 58 percent. The state ranks 17th in the nation for collections. Yet, the Department of Revenue knows it has problems, and officials have hired an outside consultant for $900,000 to review its procedures and suggest changes. “We know there are plenty of people not getting the money they’re entitled to,” said Marilyn Ray Smith, deputy commissioner for the department’s Child Support Enforcement Division. “It’s fair to say we have more cases than we can handle at the speed at which (parents) would like us to handle them. This is not a failing program. It just can’t meet the demands.” But that means little to parents who are waiting for money. Kennery said state officials told her it would take eight months to bring her ex-husband to court for a civil contempt citation for non-payment of support. She couldn’t afford to wait that long, so she ended up fronting the $50 for a constable to serve notice and took her ex-husband to court herself. Kennery and other parents say the state needs to get tougher than suspending deadbeats’ driver’s licenses - one of the latest programs aimed at trying to solve the problem - and put more of them behind bars. “Money grows in jail cells,” said Jerry Loomis, president of All State Constables in Weymouth, a group that serves court summons to deadbeats. “When people’s backs are pushed against the wall and they’re facing time in jail, oftentimes the money magically appears.” It worked in the case of singer Bobby Brown, who came up with $63,500 he owed his Stoughton children after one night behind bars. But the state is reluctant to go that route, saying jail defeats the purpose. The state each year pursues criminal charges against only 50 of the 5,100 cases it brings to court. Others are brought as civil cases, where jail is possible but mediation is more likely. “While he’s in jail, he’s not going to be paying child support,” said Paul M. Cronin, associate deputy commissioner of the Department of Revenue. Deadbeats in hiding But parents waiting for money say they’re willing to take that risk. Virginia Daniels of Halifax spent years struggling to get the state to crack down on her ex-husband, who left her and their five children about 15 years ago and owes roughly $40,000. “(The state) did absolutely nothing. They would say ‘You won’t get money if he’s in jail,’ and I would say, ‘I’m not getting any money now.’” McDermott, the register of probate, agrees that more deadbeat parents should be criminally prosecuted. “If someone is shirking their responsibility, evading the court system, thumbing their nose at Massachusetts, crossing the border, it has to be taken to the next level,” he said. “We have to tell these people: ‘You can’t hide. You’re a father or a mother. You have to make sure your kids are financially and emotionally taken care of.’” But before state officials can lock up deadbeats, they have to find them. The state tries to sniff out missing deadbeats by using computers to match information with various state agencies and banks, but its detective work doesn’t go much beyond that, and 24,000 have slipped undetected through the system. Smith, the deputy commissioner, admitted that the state has focused for years on the “low-hanging fruit” - the cases in which the deadbeat is easy to find and the money is simple to collect through garnishment of wages. Now, she said, it is time to tackle the hard-to-find deadbeats. “We have spent a tremendous amount of energy in the last 15 years working on cases we can collect on automation and get those under control,” she said. “Now we have to put our resources and spend much more time finding people, getting them into court and putting them on payment plans. This will require a major refocus of how we’ve done business.” Meanwhile, taxpayers are providing the child support deadbeats are not. The state currently lists 45,453 custodial parents who are on welfare. Many others qualify for fuel assistance, child care vouchers or other government aid. “I kept telling them that if they could get (my ex-husband) to pay $125 a week, I would not have to receive welfare benefits,” said Quinn, who is now off welfare, but is still receiving some housing and other assistance. Quinn has received some child support since the private company found her ex-husband, but still goes through plenty of dry spells. She has not gotten a check in a year and she’s back to bugging the state to work on her case. She says fighting for money is exhausting. “It sucks everything out of you,” she said. “It’s a big battle, and sometimes you think the money isn’t worth it.” Dina Gerdeman may be reached by clicking here. |
The facts and figures on what deadbeats owe$1.3 billion What deadbeats owe Massachusetts children. $9,056 The average amount a deadbeat parent owes. $600,000 What the state’s worst deadbeat owes. $500,000 What the South Shore’s worst deadbeat owes. Source: State Department of Revenue
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