Child support is a woman's issue, NOW says

The following is a press release from the Virginia National Organization for Women.

Note these elements:

(1) NOW's open acknowledgment of the virtually one-way flow of so-called child support, from men to women. And while this press release says "88% of custodial parents in Virginia are women," the more interesting percentage to know would be the percentage of women who are required to pay CS to the fathers of their children. I suspect it is much less than 12 percent (100 minus 88), either because there are no CS orders where --against the odds--fathers have custody, or because the children are in neither parent's custody but in some form of foster care.

(2) When you go the web site showing the delinquent non-custodial "parents," you find they are all men, except for one. The amounts owed by the 15 men vary, but the average is around $80,000. However, Vickie Diane Mills got on the list while owing $16,087. I suspect that she was put on the list in a feeble effort to conceal the blatant anti-male bias of the CS system.

Published on Virginia National Organization for Women (http://www.vanow.org)
VA 's $2.3 billion child support problem
By legislative
Created Feb 13 2006 - 1:14am

Legislation to strengthen child support enforcement and update support guidelines are VaNOW priorities for the 2007 General Assembly session. In the vast majority of cases, child support is a woman's issue; 88% of custodial parents in Virginia are women. In Virginia, the Division of Child Support Enforcement http://www.dss.virginia.gov/family/dcse.html [1] handles 363,000 cases, with 484,000 children. These children represent almost one-quarter of Virginia's child population. The size of the child support problem is enormous: $2.3 billion is due in past child support. Virginia is doing a number of things right in order to shore up child support. Here are a few statewide initiatives that are reaping success:

· The Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE) maintains an interactive Internet site that provides updated payment and case information to custodial and non-custodial parents. Over 7,000 customers visit the site each day.

· Virginia participates in a "New Hire Reporting" program that requires new employees to be scrutinized for past due child support. Since its inception in 1993, approximately $89.8 million has been collected as a direct result of this program.

· The Virginia $4Kids Program allows child support payments to be made through the DCSE website or by toll-free phone call. · In 2005 Virginia initiated a program to publicize delinquent non-custodial parents with outstanding warrants. Pictures of these individuals were posted in newspapers in Tidewater, Roanoke, and Richmond.

To date, 63 non-custodial parents have been arrested. Pictures can also be found on the DCSE website at http://www.dss.virginia.gov/family/wanted.html