The Brown County prosecutor’s office has filed criminal charges against 17 parents accused of not paying child support to the mothers, fathers or grandparents who have custody.
Thirty children are involved. Altogether, the unpaid support owed to their guardians totals $304,960.72. In several cases, no support has been paid over multiple years.
Brown County Deputy Prosecutor Tracey Yeager Stogsdill runs the child support division of the prosecutor’s office. She and an assistant are handling 498 child support cases.
The vast majority of them do not enter the criminal court system. There are other methods to collect child support from a parent who does not pay voluntarily. Those include garnishing a parent’s wages, business proceeds, bank accounts or tax refunds; putting a parent in a program to obtain a job; or filing liens against property or vehicles.
Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams, who took office in 2015, said it’s been fairly unusual in the past for the prosecutor to file criminal charges in child support nonpayment cases. Yeager Stogsdill has been “getting familiar” with these particular files for about a year and a half.
These 18 cases involving 17 different parents were ones that Yeager Stogsdill and Adams “felt needed more of a push,” she said.
“We’re filing criminal nonsupport cases because these crimes do not go without victims,” she said.
Nonsupport of a dependent child is a Level 6 felony, punishable by jail time and a fine.
While a parent is in jail and has no means of income, any child support he or she was required to pay is “abated,” or made zero for the time of incarceration, Yeager Stogsdill said. That’s allowed under the Lambert Rule, she said.
“Your question might be, ‘Why seek criminal sanctions if we’re not going to generate child support under the Lambert Rule?’” Adams said. “Our answer is, ‘consequences.’ The allegation is that they’re not paying anyway. There are at least going to be consequences, criminal consequences, to lack of payment. And some of these allegations are involving tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent or nonpayment.”
The cycle
Almost 1 in 4 children in the United States is involved in the child support system, according to the Office of Child Support Enforcement.
Thirty-seven percent of American children do not live with their two biological or adoptive parents.
About 20 paternity cases go through Brown Circuit Court per week, Yeager Stogsdill said. That’s one of the steps toward establishing a child support arrangement.
The child support division of the Brown County prosecutor’s office collected $1,228,618 in back child support payments during fiscal year 2016. Last year, it brought in $885,562. That’s all from a county of less than 15,000 people.
“If you’re here on a day-to-day basis, it never seems like you’re able to do enough for these families, so it’s nice to see those statistics to see that, overall, we are positively impacting the families of Brown County,” Yeager Stogsdill said. “It just seems difficult to see sometimes.”
Mothers and fathers are equally on the hook to financially support their children, Yeager Stogsdill said.
“The society construct, when you think of a deadbeat, you think it’s the father,” Adams said. That’s not always the case, he said.
There’s also no presumption that the mother will get custody, Yeager Stogsdill said. In a divorce or other custody dispute, both parents go into the courtroom with an equal chance of being the custodial or supporting parent under the law, she said.
In cases in which a grandparent is granted custody, often, substance abuse plays a part, Yeager Stogsdill said. Then, the mother and father both must pay child support to the grandparent.
Most parents the child support division deals with are under orders to pay $50 to $70 per week, per child — some more, some less, Yeager Stogsdill said. Orders are based on a parent’s income.
When the parent or grandparent who has custody doesn’t receive that payment — especially for years at a time — the family suffers.
More than half of custodial families in the child support system have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty threshold, and 80 percent have incomes below 300 percent of the poverty threshold, according to a December 2016 report from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.
Child support has become an increasingly important source of income for the lowest-income families, while public assistance — like food stamps — has declined, the report said. By 2013, the percentage of family income that came from child support rose to 41 percent, and for “deeply poor” custodial families, it was 65 percent.
Child support orders can be as little as $22 a week, Yeager Stogsdill said. It’s not much to help support that child, and that can lead to more problems.
“Sometimes, parents are not paying support because they have substance abuse issues,” Yeager Stogsdill said. “Studies also show that not receiving child support impoverishes families, and that can impact a child’s propensity for substance abuse. … It’s interesting how substance abuse can be the cause and the effect.”
On the flip side, studies have shown that participating in a child support program can have many benefits, to the child and to the parents.
Single parents who receive child support need less in government support, according to the report by the Office of Child Support Enforcement. Participating in a child support program also can help both parents “stabilize their lives” and “reinforce their identity as parents and co-parents.”
In addition to alleviating poverty, “a dollar of child support has greater effect on how well a child does in school than other sources of income,” the report said.
Parents who pay support also are more likely to have relationships with their children, the report said.
Yeager Stogsdill said that her office doesn’t get involved in child custody disputes; its role is to make sure support orders are upheld. However, establishing a child support arrangement through her office can help get a custody conversation started in court — and often, that can be done without an attorney, she said.
Barriers
Adams and Yeager Stogsdill said they’ve both seen cases in which a parent chooses not to work to avoid paying child support.
“There are certain folks in society who refuse or don’t want to participate as a contributing member to society,” Adams said. “However, some of those individuals also father or give birth to children. And therein lies a responsibility.”
Employment opportunities are another barrier. Many of the jobs in Brown County are low-wage, so parents seeking higher pay must commute, and they have to have a valid license to drive, Yeager Stogsdill said.
If they lose their license, or if their car breaks down, it’s easy for that higher-paying job out-of-county to disappear — and along with it, the child support it paid.
“It happens over and over again,” Yeager Stogsdill said.
“I wish I had a transportation system,” she muses — though that isn’t a legal use of her office’s funds, she adds.
“If that van is out front of the driveway laying on its horn, ‘Wake up, Bill; you’ve got to get to work,’ and we get him into the van and get him to work, maybe I’d be more successful” in getting more support paid, she said. “It’s idealistic … but it sure would be grand, because a lot of people say they just can’t get to work.”
“If we had more industry, it probably would be helpful, too,” she added.
Yeager Stogsdill knows of a person who walks from Bean Blossom to Nashville to work for $10.75 an hour and still pays child support. It can be done; she said. But it takes self-discipline and commitment, and those seem to be lacking, she said.
Though the Brown County office is “at the top of the charts” in terms of the state’s goals, “there’s still more support to be collected, still more parents to educate to the point where they’re willing and able to pay,” she said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Felony charges filed” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Brown County prosecutor’s office filed charges of nonsupport of a dependent child, a Level 6 felony, against the following people on Nov. 6:
- Daniel L. Alton, 25, of Coffey Hill Road, $3,096.39
- Trisha L. Armstrong, 31, of Greencastle, $4,524
- Joshua L. Barton, 40, of Bedford, two counts, $10,240
- Patricia Case, 39, of Franklin, three counts, $47,779
- Robert B. Crone Jr., 33, of Second Street, $28,734.66 in one case and $28,823.57 in another
- Fancy Dersch, 34, of Timbercrest Road, two counts, $4,923.23
- Renee Rochelle Dominiak, 41, of South Bend, $1,362.03
- Alexandria D.J. Drake, 33, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, three counts, $37,620
- Katy (Sims) Favors, 26, of State Road 46 East, $14,557
- Alyssa Harden, 24, of State Road 46 West, $1,485
- Cody W. Harden, 33, of Hicks Road, three counts, $6,701.72
- Jared M.L. Isley, 27, of State Road 46 East, $15,091.64
- Michael Lusinger, 41, of State Road 45, two counts, $34,596.16
- Jennifer L. Patterson, 35, of Becks Grove Road, $5,916.65
- Jeremy Jason Reynolds, 40, of Sweetwater Trail, four counts, $31,653
- Mark Alan Rimmel, 29, of Franklin, $22,137.25
- Carly Leeann Saylor, 22, of Melvin Road, two counts, $5,737.42
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Child support office services” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Part of the federal Social Security Act requires states to provide child support services. The Brown County prosecutor’s office’s child support division carries out those duties.
Custodial parents, noncustodial parents and guardians can apply for help in setting up or modifying a child support payment arrangement; establishing paternity, including genetic testing; and enforcing support orders.
The office cannot assist with visitation, custody or relocation issues.
Applications to receive service are available online at in.gov/dcs/support or at the prosecutor’s office.
For more information, call the child support office at 812-988-5473.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
