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
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JEFFERSON CITY - The government interest in toughening child support enforcement arose as a means to cut down welfare costs by getting absent parents to bear some of the burden that had been covered by Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
"When they did the welfare law, one of the biggest things they were attempting to do is to decrease the burden of the state on taxpayers to pay for somebody else's children," said the House Children Committee Chairman, Rep. Pat Dougherty, D-St. Louis.
"The taxpayers shouldn't be unnecessarily burdened with helping support children, when there are individuals out there making a living and could be supporting their children."
Both Dougherty and the director of the Missouri Child Support Enforcement Division, Teresa Kaiser, say both the child and the taxpayer will benefit by the legislative proposals to toughen enforcement of child support court orders.
Currently, the state collects one of every four dollars that is owed in child support, about $300 million. But that means about $1 billion is uncollected. The state hopes to double the amount of child support collections in three years with these new measures.
Missouri has about 300,000 child support cases. Kaiser said that they are collecting about a quarter of these regularly and that another quarter pay every now and then. She also said that about one quarter of the parents who owe support are in prison, in drugs or alcohol treatment centers or have mental illness.
Kaiser said that it is estimated that if everyone who owes support will pay, the welfare rule will be cut in a half.
That's why the new child support bills are giving new enforcement powers, as the measure that would provide more tools to the state to determine paternity. The division director would have the power to order genetic test to prove paternity. In addition, deadbeat parents would not have the chance to a jury trial to prove paternity.
Dougherty, the House Children Committee chairman, defended the lack of a jury trial by noting that genetic tests are 98.99 percent accurate.
John Dockery, director of the child support unit in the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney's office, said that he is in favor of this measure because genetic test are very reliable but the states still gives the chance to the person to prove that they never had sex with the woman.
Some people disagree with the part of no jury trial. "I have a problem with that," said House Children Committee MemberVicki Hartzler, R-Belton. "I think that you should be able to have a jury trial for everything."
Kaiser answered that, in the past, many parents had their case in court for one year or two to delay the date they have to start to pay.
Another tool in the bill to improve collection enforcement is a nationwide system to track child support orders around the whole country.
Employers would be required to report new hires within 20 days. And when the national system goes on line in 1998, new-hire data will be matched every two days against lists of non-paying parents.
Kaiser said those provisions would stop some from evading their support obligations by job jumping across state lines because the Division would have access to a national directory of newly hired employees that will help the state find the deadbeat parents faster.