MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
Also see the sidebar stories KIDSIDE1.HTM and KIDSIDE2.HTM
JEFFERSON CITY - Deadbeat parents have been made a legislative and legal target by Missouri's lawmakers for 1997 -- but only because requires they be a target.
Both the state House and Senate have approved bills to meet a federal mandate enacted last fall by Congress which requires all 50 states to come into compliance before the end of the year.
The House bill is sponsored by Pat Dougherty, D-St. Louis. It would allow the Child Support Enforcement Division to seek penalties against parents who are more than $2,000 in arrears or 3 months behind in their support payments.
Penalties would include revoking or suspending the professional, driver and recreational licenses of deadbeat parents. Before that happen, however, the deadbeat parent would have the opportunity to appear before a hearing and arrange a payment plan.
"This is an effort to make people understand that the state is serious about them caring for the child that they have brought into this world," Dougherty said.
"We don't do it for punishment," said Teresa Kaiser, director of the Child support Enforcement Division. "What we want to do is motivate people to came in an make a payment agreement."
"For many people the ability to drive a car is more important than support their children," Kaiser said. "It's sad but that how it is."
Dougherty said that other states have implemented this type of legislation with a lot of success.
Maine suspended fewer than 75 license in the first year after it passed a similar law, but increased its child support collections by $10 millions.
In Illinois reports state officials there collected $3 million last year after word spread that they would revoke the professional and occupational licenses of parents who were behind in their support.
Despite the advantages cited by supporters and the federal requirements, the measure has generated controversy in Missouri's legislature.
"I don't think we can work out it," said Rep. Marilyn Edwards-Pavia, R-House Springs of the state's efforts to comply the federal mandates. "I'd rather do it slower and see if our state departments are working."
Edwards-Pavia said the bills do not give adequate consideration to individual circumstances.
Scott Field, president of the National Congress for Men and Children St. Louis chapter, shares her opinion.
Field questioned the success in other states when they track the individual parents.
Field said that last year in Florida, 1.4 percent of the parents from whom the state was trying to collect support had, actually, passed away.
"For example, we don't know what percentage are in institutions for mental illness of how many are in prison," Field said.
Field thinks that there are 3 types of support, financial, emotional and residential. But he complaint that the state seems to assume that only the financial is important.
For all of the arguments about what the state should do, Missouri actually has little choice. If the state does not pass a law meeting the federal requirements for stronger child support enforcement, the state could lose at least &65 million in federal funds.
"We don't have a lot of options, we have to carry out with the federal mandate," said House Children Committee Member Norma Champion, Springfield.
Concerns about the requirements, however, have led to softening some provisions in the Senate's bill.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Harold Caskey, D-Butler- would move the decision of license revocation from the director of the Child Support Enforcement Division to the courts.
"That measure will substantially reduce collections because a judicial process is much more complex," said Paul Keller, a legal counsel in the Child Support Enforcement Division.