Challenging child support misconceptions
By Thomas A. Lange II
September 7, 2000
An AP story by Karen Gullo that appeared on page 1-A of the Herald Palladium (one of our local papers) on Friday January 28 contained the following paragraph:
"Some 30 million children are owed $50 billion in child support and funds are being collected in only 23 percent of all cases, according to The Association for Children for Enforcement of Support Inc., an advocacy group."
ACES knows that the latest estimate is that 63 % of child support due is paid (this information is available online, see http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p60-196.pdf.) ACES President Geraldine Jensen made comments on this data when it was released (see http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/april99/0423.html for a record of her comments.) We find it inexplicable that Ms. Jensen and ACES would choose to ignore the data in this report and misrepresent other data.
It should also be noted that the 63% figure is a substantial underestimate for a number of reasons.
The 23% number ACES cites (they have frequently in the past cited numbers in the 20% range) probably comes from the welfare reimbursement system and which would only be applicable to that portion of the child support caseload that is receiving welfare. Another example of ACES misrepresenting child support information is on their web site at http://childsupport-aces.org/facts.html. The federal document they are currently (as of September 7, 2000) misrepresenting can be found at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/prgrpt.htm. Is it interesting that they don't provide the link to the document to which they refer?
When ACES lies about the amount of child support paid they cloud the public understanding of the issue and contribute to the inability of our government to form solid public policy in regard to child support. ACES thereby makes child support collections less efficient and non-traditional family policy more destructive!
But ACES is not alone in leading the public to believe that child support collections are running in the 20% range. Al Gore in his presidential campaign has misled the public. The Feminist Majority Foundation is another misrepresentative of the truth when it comes to child support news (see http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/april99/0402.html.)
Even the Department of Health and Human Services (see GAO /AIMD-97-72, available online at http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=gao&docid=f:ai97072.txt.pdf) seems to be not clearly get information out to the congress and the public. Do these people and organizations not know what they are talking about or are they lying?
ACES is undisputedly the most reprehensible of the child support misinformation merchants. After FACT had an event in 1998 a letter to the editor in the Herald Palladium appeared on June 30 with the following paragraph.
Many fathers' rights groups say that men are more likely to pay child support if they have joint custody. This was proven wrong in California. The state had a presumption "mandatory joint custody" law for three years. During this time period the collection rate for child support was 20 percent. This is the same rate as other states that did not have a joint custody law. In fact, California repealed the law because fathers were asking the court for joint custody to pay less support, approximately 20% less.
First, lets get it out that impartial researchers in general agree that joint custody does lead to greater overall compliance with child support orders. Also, the 20% collection rate ACES is citing is again a misrepresentation of the facts. And, finally, the law was not repealed.
We called ACES' Toledo headquarters and they gave us another 800 number to call for a person named Nora O'brien. Ms. O'brien had apparently written an article for an ACES newsletter describing the situation in the above italicized paragraph. One of our members had a phone conversation with Ms. O'brien and she held strong to her argument that she was correct.
We know better.
