Fighting Over Child Support After the Pink Slip Arrives

By Lena Trondson • March 1, 2010

Published: March 28, 2009

The same story echoed a dozen times through Room E8 of Manhattan Family Court in a single day: fathers, pinched by the recession, pleading for a reduction in child support.

A salesman at Saks Fifth Avenue who is estranged from his teenage daughter said he feared he would be included in the next round of layoffs expected at his store.

A man who had been laid off from a factory said he managed to find work at Mets games, but for less pay, $9 an hour. Another man, on the verge of eviction, begged for a break from his $315 monthly payments.

“Last week was my child’s birthday, and I couldn’t get him a present,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “This is killing me.”

Since January, Family Court in New York has been filled with urgent requests like these, alarming judges and overwhelming calendars with what are known as modification cases.

Similar patterns are unfolding across the country: In Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, the district attorney’s family support division has received an unusually high number of calls from parents who previously paid diligently but are now having trouble.

The child-support office in Milwaukee saw a 20 percent spike in the number of custodial parents seeking enforcement of support orders last year, with most of the increase coming in the fall as the unemployment rate there began to creep upward.

To explain why they can no longer pay as much per month, the parents, typically fathers, cite layoffs, cutbacks in work hours and the loss of homes to foreclosure. Presented with documentation of falling incomes and rising expenses, judges often have little choice but to grant the downward adjustments, even in the face of protests from mothers struggling to support children.

Magistrate Matthew Troy, a stocky, gregarious man with a white horseshoe mustache who is one of 15 judges hearing such cases in Manhattan Family Court, said the decisions can be brutal. “It’s not a trickle down — it’s a direct route,” he said of the effects, especially in poor families. “Everybody who relies on the father gets hit.”

The reductions force some families to apply for welfare for the first time, while others become increasingly dependent on food stamps or risk eviction when they come up short on rent.

“In many cases, it’s devastating,” said C. A. Watts, the director of the district attorney’s family support division for Clark County. “Some of the parents absolutely depend on that money coming in. It’s a domino effect. The custodians need the money to feed and clothe the children. If the money stops, it puts a burden on the custodial parent, and they have to come up with funds another way. They’re not going to let their children starve.”

The amount of child support varies based on individual family circumstances, but New York State begins with these guidelines: A noncustodial parent generally pays 17 percent of gross income for one child, 25 percent for two children and up to 35 percent for five or more children, as well as a share of child care, medical and education expenses.

“We see everything,” said Peter Passidomo, chief of the state’s 125 support magistrates. “High income, low income, across the board. It’s just like in an intact family where the income earner has lost the job.”

Though Family Court in New York is open to the news media, names of the parties are typically not revealed.

Judge Troy, who has been a Family Court judge since 1999, said that in recent weeks he had seen a former Lehman Brothers executive whose $7 million in stock had disappeared, leaving him unable to pay his child support. And then there was the divorced couple whose combined income had surpassed $400,000 — until they both lost their jobs and were scrambling to figure out how to pay two private-school tuitions on roughly $800 a week in unemployment benefits.

Most, though, are more like the man who went from a decent-paying factory job to working in food service during Mets games in Queens. Judge Troy lowered his monthly payment for his three teenagers to $50 per month, from $686. Otherwise, he feared, the father would be unable to meet his obligation and face a more drastic punishment: jail.

“It wasn’t his fault he lost his job,” Judge Troy said. “I don’t want to throw a guy like that in the clink.”

Source: New York Times

Note from blog author: For someone who has struggled to get a court order transferred, registered, and put in place in the correct state after disability for years while arrears were piling up, it is about time we read about magistrates that actually take into consideration the outside factors that non-custodial parents face when they are laid off work or become disabled. They have been facing a judgmental society, angry custodial parents, and unfair judges/magistrates for years. For many non-custodial parents now labeled “dead-beat dads,” the change is coming too late. However, for future non-custodial parents facing layoffs and disability, this will be very helpful. Change is overdue!