Reply #46: actually

[lazarus]

it would have been an issue.

And you seem to have found a great deal of information that isn't presented in the article. Care to share your source?

As for his not being convicted if he was poor, that's a load of crap. At one point, I was out of work and missed a couple of payments. I had just gotten a job when they served me. I offered to pay back 20% of what I owed each month. Nope. Had to pay the whole thing, right then, or I was going to jail.

I got lucky and had family that could loan me the money.

But tell me what possible purpose would have been served by putting me in jail, costing me a job 2 weeks before Christmas? Is that in the best interests of the child?

Did you know that every jurisdiction in the nation has a child support enforcement department, but virtually none of them have a child visitation and custody enforcement department?

I'm not saying that paying child support isn't a requirement. But there are mitigating circumstances that never seem to get mentioned in these "deadbeat dad" articles.

I knew a man who was ordered to pay 70% of his wages. The judge told him to get a second job and work weekends if he had to. That sounds fair, doesn't it? When's he supposed to see his kids?

Family courts talk a lot about "best interests of the child," but when you really start looking, at the number of men who have been jailed because they lost their jobs, at the number of men who have been locked out of their children's lives, you realise that's not what the courts are after at all.