Lary Holland: Official Blog, Links, and Resources

The article has a few unqualified statements or very vague statements:

BRIDGETON -- The Sheriff's Department set another record last week when they arrested 34 people on child support warrants totaling $657,688.

In a previous sweep of deadbeat mothers and fathers in September, police rounded up 26 people who owed a total of $500,000.

Barruzza said it appears more people are failing to make child support payments.

"I have no idea why," the sheriff said. "They're ignoring their responsibilities but we won't ignore ours."

For one thing, the article doesn't say what the actual income levels are of the people that were arrested, how many were fathers, and how many were mothers. These simple questions are critically in need of being answered because I am willing to bet that the super-majority of the people arrested are indigent or very low-income fathers that still want to be involved in their children's lives but are instead involved in ongoing battles over finances instead.

I also am very interested to know what the current custody arrangements for those individuals that were arrested are, how many of these arrested parents missed Christmas with their children, and how many were arrested at Custody exchanges in front of their own children. It is likely that the progam is just being used by vindictive ex-partners as a weapon to oust one parent from their children's lives. The program hardly focuses on the best-interests of children but rather on bureaucratic financial incentives, especially when children see their own parents arrested by law enforcement around the holidays.

I was particularly in shock that the highest county law enforcement officer that is elected in his County says "I have no idea why" regarding the increase of why parets are unable to meet the often-times steep child support obligations forced on them even though the parents are continuously involved with their children. The common-sense answer would be likely attributable to increase unemployment, illegal immigration, increased participation in food assistance programs, increased poverty, etc. Someone should consider recalling Sheriff Barruzza for participating in such a scam of the taxpayers and being so ignorant.

The child support enforcement program is plagued with fraud, faulty accounting, and continues to burden parents that are actually involved with their children. The program was originally intended as a way to recuperate money lost through welfare expenditures, now it is a tool for middle and upper-class families to continue feuding over finances once they have dissolved their personal relationships with one another. Parents fall into the bureaucratic trap of fighting while government enjoys increased expansion and employment numbers.

The overwhelming number of the participants in the programs are middle and upper-class families that have been enabled to fight on the taxpayer dime. We need to shrink these programs back to their originally intended size and purpose to protect the taxpayer, parents, and children so it cannot be used to oust fit, willing, and competent parents from their children's lives or used to force financial hardship over equally fit parents.

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The child support program is a federally funded grant program under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. The Title IV-D program actually rewards states for encouraging and creating"single-parent families." The program is plagued with unnecessary expenses, fraud, errors, and theft.

The Title IV-D program compensates the states based on expenditures, so the more the state claims it spends the more money the federal government kicks in.

The Title IV-D program is watered down with over participation because the majority of the participants are 200% or greater above the poverty line.

The Title IV-D program does not reward the state for keeping families intact or for encouraging that parents equally participate in their children's physical upbringing.

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Lary Holland, Nationwide Blueprint, Nationwide Blueprint for Title IV-D Reform, Title IV-D, Social Security, Fixed Incomes, Property Tax, Tax Fraud

Dwayne Dail was falsely imprisoned for a crime that he didn't commit. As part of the his release and reentry to society Mr. Dail was awarded a settlement of around $360,000.00. Mr. Dail was incarcerated for 18 years of his life.

According to the Innocence Project website:

"Dwayne Dail was released from custody on August 28, 2007, after a state
court judge agreed to vacate his conviction and dismiss all char[g]es
against him. He was 39 when released and had served 18 years in prison.
In October 2007 Dail received a pardon from Gov. Mike Easley based on
his actual innocence."

The Goldboro News-Argus on December 14, 2007 reported that Judge adjusts claim for support and further that:

"...it's settled that the compensation awarded to people who
are wrongfully convicted is not back wages. It covers pain and suffering, legal fees, and any type of DNA testing expenses that were incurred. I'm pretty confident the number is pretty close to zero."

Even though the money received by Mr. Dail was for pain and suffering caused from his being falsely imprisoned for 18 years, amongst other things, it did not prevent an attempt by Lorraine Michaels to come forward and try to capitalize on an already bad situation. Notwithstanding the more important point of Mr. Dail not being able to witness his offspring, any children that would have been involved in a case between the parties would have already aged out of the system.

"Over recent years I have personally witnessed more and more news stories and judicial districts treating child support judgments as some sort of, after the fact, reward for raising a child, which just creates more incentives for families to separate and try to remove one parent from the lives of their children," states Lary Holland.

"Only part of the state compensation owed exonerated former inmate Dwayne
Dail can go to his child's biological mother, his attorney says.

Judge David Brantley ordered Thursday that the statute of limitations on Dail's child support responsibility is the past three
years, attorney Shelby Benton said.

State law holds that people in prison are not liable for child support payments."

"What I found most irritating was the fact that the story did not cover whether or not the biological mother and Mr. Dail were together at the time of his incarceration and whether or not the child was able to communicate on a regular basis through either letters or visits. Child Support is so much more than a simple financial obligation, it is the actual time that both parents get to spend with their children," further states Holland.

There certainly are more questions to ask about the current case at hand. We will be monitoring the News-Argus in North Carolina for more information as well as making some of our phone calls on the issue.

Lary Holland is author of numerous articles surrounding family court issues and related subjects. He is available at 800-319-4955 x3 for more information.

Original Article By:

By News-Argus Staff
Published in News on December 14, 2007 02:24 PM

It was pleasing to see that the child support agencies are beginning to cannabalize their own government officials. In a recent article published (see below) by the Houston Chronicle, Representative Dutton was ordered to pay back child support despite many of the children involved not even living at home. It does always please me when a bureaucracy becomes so large that it begins eating its own. It is definitely time to reign in these various bureaucracies so they only focus on the nation's most needy instead of focusing on middle and upper income feuding families. The proof is in the report below as well as http://www.nationwideblueprint.com.

I would obviously encourage those advocates that believe in the same downsizing of our supersized government to write the dear Rep. Dutton and spread some of the information from these sites.

Dece 12, 2007 Rep. Dutton ordered to pay back child support. (Copyright Houston Chronicle 2007)

A Harris County family court has awarded the ex-wife of state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. nearly $16,000, finding the state legislator was in arrears on court-ordered child support payments.

But the court declined to hold the Houston Democrat in contempt for those late payments, rejecting his ex-wife's attempts to have him thrown into jail.

Dutton, an attorney, also was ordered to pay an additional $8,000 in legal fees to his former wife's lawyer in the ruling issued Friday by Associate Judge Conrad Moren.

Dutton has long been embroiled in a bitter legal fight with Phyllis Faykus-Dutton, the mother of four of his sons. Their divorce was finalized in 1995, but they have butted heads in court repeatedly since then.

In court papers, she has accused her ex-husband of trying to shirk his child support obligations. But Dutton said he fell behind on the payments because the original court order was "ambiguous" and failed to stipulate how his payments would change when his sons turned 18 or if they moved in with him.

Three of their sons are now living away from home, attending various universities.

A conflict of interest?

"The reason I didn't pay (child support) is because I wanted the court to tell me how much to pay — because I didn't want her to have one nickel she wasn't entitled to," the state legislator said from his Houston law office on Tuesday.

Dutton is chairman of the House Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues, which occasionally oversees child support issues and other civil law matters relating to families.

In court documents earlier this year, Faykus-Dutton accused her ex-husband of introducing several legislative amendments that would personally benefit him in matters before the family court deciding his case.

Last month, Faykus-Dutton asked that the state legislator be jailed and fined for each failure to comply with the child support order. She also asked that he be placed on probation for 10 years after his release.

She accused her ex-husband of failing to make some child support payments dating back to 1999. In recent months, when he was expected to pay $1,500 a month, Harold Dutton had paid only $400 or sometimes not at all, she alleged in court papers.

"Certainly, he, as an attorney and a legislator who sets policy, needs to comply with a court order," said Myrna Davila Gregory, the attorney representing Dutton's ex-wife. "He needs to follow a court order, just like every mother or father who pays child support is required to do."

Dutton suggested that he would not have fallen behind on the payments if a ruling had been issued promptly when he questioned the ambiguity of the original court order.

Custody issue raised

He also countered that his ex-wife became angry when he recently sought custody of their youngest son, who will turn 14 later this month.

"She is trying to muddy the water because she wants to figure out everything she can do to damage me," Dutton said.

Dutton said he sought custody of the youngest boy and filed a complaint with Harris County Child Protective Services after learning the teen had allegedly been "violently whipped" with a leather belt by his mother's live-in boyfriend.

The judge Friday declined to grant Dutton temporary custody of the boy, but Dutton said he expects the issue will be revisited at a Jan. 8 hearing. For now, the teen remains with his mother.

The court battle between the former spouses has sometimes taken surprising turns.

For instance, Dutton claimed in court papers last month that his gross earnings total $600 a month and his monthly net income after deductions is $250.

Dutton, who has seven children by various women, testified last week that he is planning to adopt another child. The 3-year-old girl he wants to adopt belongs to a woman he used to date, who asked Dutton to be the child's father, he said.

Dutton also testified he is engaged to be married to another woman — not the mother of the 3-year-old girl.

"I guess my question to him was, you're adopting another child and you can't pay child support for the kids you already have?" Gregory said on Tuesday.

Attorneys are scheduled to return to court on Friday, when the judge's rulings will be officially spelled out in a court order.

Dutton, 62, was first elected to his post in 1985 and is one of the longest-serving members of the Texas House.

A fairly comprehensive summary has been created on a standalone page for a summary of all eight stages that should be printed out and circulated amongst leadership in various social advocacy groups. The eight stages will help create healthy debates on both sides regarding respective organizational goals. Most of the information is reprinted from various websites covering the works of Bill Moyer. Even if you don't believe in the politics of Bill Moyer, you can believe in the framework and use it to help advance your organization's position.

You can find the standalone page located at http://www.laryholland.com/eightstages.html.

Does the Open Meetings Act Apply to the Child Support Leadership Council (CSLC) and the Friend of the Court Bureau Advisory Committee?

The Child Support Leadership Council (CSLC) and the Friend of the Court Bureau Advisory Committee (FOCBAC) do not follow the provisions of the Open Meetings Act (OMA). Unlike the Open Records from which the judiciary is excluded, the Open Meetings Act contemplates the inclusion of the judicial branch as a public body. We know for a fact from the minutes of the FOCBAC that the CASPER meetings were held in private before the quarterly FOCBAC meetings; that proposed minutes and approved minutes of FOCBAC meetings are not made available in compliance with the OMA; that some of our members have been excluded from CSLC deliberations that should have been public; and that there is a hostile and uncooperative attitude towards input from members of the public.

Lets put it to the task...

I and others made requests for the CASPER report which would have been included under the Open Records and Freedom of Information Act request before it was finally published on the SCAO website. The report was first indicated in the June 22, 2006 "Approved Minutes" of FOCBAC.

Child Support Program Review Committee (CASPER)

Mr. Capps informed the Advisory Committee about CASPER, which is an ad hoc
committee that examines the system to determine if there are ways of finding
increases in revenues or streamlining the system to the whole child support
program to make recommendations to the Program Leadership Group (PLG). The
Committee has nine people, (two from SCAO, two from OCS, one from DIT, and
two from PAAM) and meets every two weeks at the Hall of Justice.

As many people can see the Child Support Program attempts to operate in the dark with little public input because they know there are significant numbers of people that are now against the operation of the program as a free for all welfare program that is plagued with overparticipation (over half of which are middle and upper class feuding families) in an effort to drive up collection numbers and participation numbers to drown out the failures it has with the needy population. Successful collections mostly come from income witholding orders as opposed to shifting income to means tested welfare recipients.

At some point we will have to ask the question, why lift up one population at taxpayer expense when it just creates the same problem in the contributing class? The only difference is that there is now a bunch of bureacratic parasites that benefit, not society.

More headlines continue pouring in on the negatives associated with the nation's child support enforcement program.

Innocent Man Sent To Jail For Missed Child Support

BOSTON -- Systemic problems allowed an innocent Massachusetts man to be labeled a deadbeat dad and sent to jail.

Team 5 Investigates' Rhondella Richardson reported that it happened to John Caliri.

"I wake up in the morning and I go to bed at night, knowing that I've been in jail because of something I did not do, and I don't deserve it," said Caliri.

Original Source: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/14763949/detail.html

The BostonChannel.Com, WCVB Channel 5, news site carried the story of another man that was affected by the child support enforcement program. This story brings up an interesting final point about the system essentially not listening to the evidence and just rushing to a judgment in an effort to compete for federal incentive money. "Anytime that you have government setting standards on negative outcomes you have a a serious risk of abuse, naturally you are going to see more broken homes and people jailed, because that is what the system is rewarded for," states Lary Holland.