I've been doing a lot of child support contempt hearings recently- i.e. "pay your child support or you're going to jail!"

What I'm realizing is that the huge numbers you see these days for child support left unpaid these days by "deadbeat dads" are mostly illusionary. What they consist of is child support that wasn't calculated correctly in the first place.

This morning I was talking to a typical mope in this position. I'm going over the original order with him:

"This says you earned a gross of $5000 per month at the time, making your child support $1250 per month. That right?"

"Naw, I never earned $5000 a month in my life."

"Why the #@%$ did you sign this off saying you did, then?"

"I wanted the divorce over and I figured she would settle down once it was done with."

Four years later, she's asking for him to go to jail because he's not paying $1250 per month support out of a take-home of $1200.

Now, obviously he bears most of the blame for signing off on the $1250 per month support in the first place. My point, though, is that his ex was never actually entitled to that; his correct support amount should have been around $350- which he actually could pay. The $900 per month difference is an illusion that he never earned or should have owed.

That probably makes him stupid. It doesn't make him a deadbeat, and shouldn't be counted as part of the huge backlog of unpaid child support you hear so much about.

Not just a river in Egypt

Ten days ago, a mother calls me absolutely hysterical that her (16 YO) daughter is being held in custody for the first week of school. Her Highness was arrested over the long weekend when the cops found her drunk in a car with her equally drunk boyfriend. I point out to her that this is the third similar incident in less than a year. She doesn't want to hear it: the on-duty lawyer was a "public pretender"- scores a lot of points with me- the probation officer didn't care about her daughter, the prosecutor was a jerk, the judge was rude, and anyway it was only one beer, Her Highness had a hard day at the fast food emporium, and why should we believe the PBT, and, and, and... and I need to get down to the courthouse and get her released before school starts tomorrow. I explain that it Ain't Gonna Happen- no doubt making me (on the 19th anniversary of my swearing in to the Bar) something less than a Real Lawyer.

I call around to see what's up, and discover that HH has DUI charges in two local courts that she didn't mention to anyone at Juvenile Court. In one, she was racing the same boyfriend on one of the main arterials- both drunk again- and lost control of her car. Luckily, she missed any other cars when she spun out and hit the curb on the other side of the street. When the same cop that busted her for that found her drunk in a car AGAIN, she became a guest of the State, bringing us back to the start of this story.

Yesterday I'm talking to HH, who is actually a pretty nice kid. I got her into Drug Court, and she's got her head straight and is ready to step up and deal with the problem (we'll see if she remembers that once she gets out). She mentions that her family has a history of alcoholism, and that Mom smelled of alcohol when she came to visit the other day.

AH HA. Suddenly this all makes sense!

Goldilocks and crim pro

This morning one of the commissioners I regularly appear before decided to explain the criminal process to some 11 year old using the analogy of Goldilocks and the three bears. Naturally, at the break, I had to goof on her:

"These handcuffs are tooooo loose!"

"These handcuffs are tooooo tight!"

"These handcuffs are juuuust right!"

Turn around to find some parent staring at me in disbelief. Hey, do this for a while and see if you start to think this way...