Facing the child support dilemma
It is hardly a surprise to find that suburban parents who owe child support have fallen further behind over the past decade. Delinquent child support has long been a challenge for the court system, and the sinking economy can only make it worse. But it is curious to find, as State Government Writer Mike Riopell and Politics and Projects Reporter Kerry Lester reported this week, that the problem is growing in the suburbs at a faster pace in Illinois than elsewhere.
The discrepancy appears to be related in part to too much reliance on attorneys they can no longer afford to press cases seeking delinquent payments rather than on state programs that exist for the purpose. So, an immediate solution for parents struggling to get payments due them and their children would seem to be to take advantage of the system set up for that purpose.
OK. Easy enough. No doubt Pamela Lowry, director of the Illinois Division of Child Support Services, is correct in her implication that if families sign up sooner for free help from the state — before they lose the ability to pay for private attorneys — they will get help sooner finding a nonpaying parent and arranging to get their money. But, also no doubt, it must be wishful thinking to hope it can be that simple.
For one thing, the state — itself widely characterized as a deadbeat for its own late payments to all manner of debtors — hardly seems to be in a position to assume tens of thousands of new delinquent child support cases. Couple that with the dilemma for parents who want to pay child support but can’t because either they can’t find a job or the job they have isn’t sufficient to keep up with their obligations and the frustration only mounts.
In the words of NIU law professor Lawrence Schlam, “What can you do?”
It’s a succinct and natural appraisal. But it’s not the only response, and it’s far from an acceptable conclusion. The fact is, we have to do something. For the unspoken victims here are the children who have too few advocates and the least recourse of anyone.
So, legally and socially, we have to first rededicate ourselves to the proposition that the children are the first priority in these cases and, therefore, must be the first obligation of whatever resources are available. And suburban parents who begin experiencing problems collecting money owed them must be quick to take advantage of the resources available through the state, while the state makes a concentrated effort to marshal its not-insubstantial forces, even in its current depressed economic condition, to collect all it can.
It’s not the most inspirational formula for addressing an obstinate and long-standing problem, but it does amount to a key quality on which all strategies can build — commitment. Without it, there is no success in the best of circumstances. With it, we can at least diminish the hardships in the worst of them.