Punishing deadbeats

It's an incredibly frustrating situation for countless Americans, most of them women, who are struggling to raise children alone when they expected financial assistance.

Instead, they are left to deal with all the expenses related to child-rearing: The house payment. The clothing. The food. The school supplies. And miscellaneous expenses incurred when children participate in any extracurricular activities.

Month after month, the child support promised -- not just promised, decreed by a court -- doesn't come. The noncustodial parents become thousands of dollars in arrears, and they are virtually assured nothing will happen to them. After all, if they're incarcerated, they can't earn any money to make child-support payments.

But Cape Girardeau County judges have shown they're willing to enforce a law on absentee fathers who refuse to support their children after being given several opportunities to do so. Last month, two men were sentenced to three years in prison for criminal nonsupport. In August, another man was sentenced to four years for the same offense.

The prison time even surprised an assistant prosecutor who was handling one of the cases.

"I guess the judge felt it was justified," given one defendant's criminal history plus the fact he hadn't had any secure employment and was elusive with his probation officer, Gordon Glaus said.

Indeed, if a noncustodial parent has a criminal history and refuses to work to support himself or his children, judges should enforce the law to its full extent so the father realizes how serious nonsupport is. The children don't have anything to lose, because they weren't getting money or a positive influence to begin with.

That stance isn't a popular one everywhere. Missouri's Department of Corrections is overcrowded, so judges are encouraged to put those convicted of criminal nonsupport on probation. Deadbeat parents are the first ones released when the crowding gets to be too much to handle.

In Cape Girardeau County last year, 31 of 48 nonsupport cases ended up with the offenders on probation. Other cases were dismissed once the offending parent started making child-support payments again.

Something has to change statewide. A 2002 review by State Auditor Claire McCaskill showed Missouri collected less than 20 percent of support owed to 538,000 custodial parents and their children between 1996 to 2001. She recommended being more harsh in suspending driver's licenses, checking tax returns to locate deadbeat parents and using private contractors to collect support payments.

Advocates for noncustodial parents argue that tough laws don't take into account job losses or other economic hardships, and some parents may stay away from their children instead of risking prosecution.

Certainly, any solution should include understanding about unavoidable hardships, but that frankly isn't the problem most of the time. It's hard to imagine that anyone would bring children into the world and then refuse to provide for their needs, but that's the case. And that's the situation Missouri's courts have to address.