Lary Holland: Official Blog, Links, and Resources

KTAR.COM (November 14th, 2007) recently ran an interesting report entitled Audit: Child Support Enforcement Needs Improvement but so does the reporting provided by KTAR.COM. Let's start with basic investigative reporting before just releasing a five paragraph report that is fairly vague with little to no follow-up. I posted follow-up comments regarding two key areas the article didn't touch on, with the first being undistributed collections and the second being who are actually benefiting from the program. The KTAR.COM after several days didn't approve the comments of anyone that was posting to their website.

Not only is there "room for improvements" in the Arizona child support program, but there is definitely room in KTAR.COM's reporting style so they just don't fall prey to serving a well-oiled government propaganda machine.

"The Auditor General's Office conducted a special review of the state Department of Economic Security's program to collect child support payments." Essentially the auditor general, according to the above article, states that there are room for improvements, suggested that the state track how long it takes to process court orders, there is no efficient way to determine how many payments are being misdirected.

My major problem with the lack of reporting is that the auditor general, according to this article, doesn't account for the $17,945,269.00 in 2005, leading to about $11,388,064 dollars being absorbed into the general fund as a result of their failure to distribute. This is actually a reward for poor performance. In 2006, $11,112,336 was the net undistributed collections with at least $5,318,124.00 qualifying so far for absorption into their budget. The State of Arizona doesn't explain why the children have not received these millions of dollars and why the State of Arizona is allowed to transfer undistributed collections to their own budget instead of back to the paying parents.

Furthermore, the report does not talk about the massive number of NEVER ASSISTANCE or FORMER ASSISTANCE members that are receiving child support services opposed to the very small number of actual needy families that receive the child support collection benefit on taxpayer dime. The number of participants that should not be receiving services are also climbing at a higher rate than those of people that are actually receiving the benefits as a result of being engaged in other forms of government assistance.

In 2006, only $11,834,544 was collected for actual needy families which almost equals the amount that was actually undistributed by the State of Arizona!!! This is a very telling story showing how ineffective the child support program actually is. Interestingly, about 7 times the amount of support collected for needy families number was collected by the government, $97,456,711, which is an 8.1% gain over 2005, for families that receive no government assistance at all. Another $173,422,153.00, a 7.1% gain over 2005, was collected for families that are not on current assistance programs, but may have been in the past. As you can tell the program does not serve needy families at all when you demonstate the money being retained by the state.

There is definitely a need for further audits by the Auditor General in Arizona to explain why the program was not fully investigated and certainly questions directed to the staff at KTAR.COM on why they are assisting in suppressing the truth about the ineffective program. Rest assured your comments will not be suppressed at this website.

An accurate representation of someone's pockets when they enter the anti-family court system. Be sure to log on to http://www.getyourjusticelive.com.

If our fine state is willing to send a parent that is behind but is currently paying to jail, who benefits?

What about the custodial parents who become
accustomed to receiving weekly payments that now stop while we -- the
public -- become responsible through public assistance?

Does
the public that is now paying to house the "deadbeat parent" in jail
benefit? At a minimum of $30 a day, which I'm sure is conservative, it
will cost us $10,800 to house one person a year. If a person is two
years at $20,000 and given a two-year sentence, they are now $40,000
behind and the public has paid almost $22,000 to house them in jail.

Do
the children that have lost a parent for that two years and get to say,
"My dad can't take me to Cub Scouts because he's in jail," benefit?

Do employers who lose employees because they are now in jail benefit?

What we are facing today, much like others in the past, is a simple civil rights violation. This is how you get heard... Let your legislators know that you are fed up and not going to take it anymore! Demand equal rights and equal treatment, meaning equal access to your children!

The Equal Parenting Symposium was a success and will be airing on local public access television in the coming week around the metro Detroit area. The most recent symposium was in the City of Pontiac, in Oakland County. Politicians, Professionals, and interested citizens from all over the state appeared for presentations by Jim Semerad (Dads and Moms of Michigan), Dr. Michael Ross (Family Rights Coalition), Lary Holland (Family Court Problems), Jay Fedewa (Family Rights Coalition) and Minister Ronald Smith (Children Need Both Parents, Inc.).

As video becomes available, it will be uploaded and shared here! Also an audio podcast will be available later this week of the speeches that were given and available for sharing and download. This event was a success and even more people are now educated about the funding mechanisms of our Friend of the Court systems, the steep rewards that are provided for the creation of absent parent households, and the devastating effects of family court on our economy.

Thanks for the Family Rights Coalition, and the other members of the symposium for helping make this event such a success!

John Mercure frequently targets child support obligors in his news stories.

• Most child support collections are made for families who have never been on assistance! The program was originally intended to recuperate money expended by the federal government to the states for their welfare programs. Now the taxpayer is caught funding a glorified collection service for middle and upper income feuding families!
• The most effective form of collection is through income withholding orders through Fiscal Year 2006. Income Withholding Orders are an automated task that doesn't require employees.
• The Financial Data Match program is a computer generated list that is matched up electronically by the State's data contractors. This sweeps money from obligors' accounts automatically and doesn't take additional employees.
• Federal and State Income Tax Off-Sets are another highly effective method of collection child support according to the federal government reports on Child Support collections. This again does not take additional employees.
• Wisconsin's Total Administrative Expenses, which as of today are unaudited and likely to be plagued with immense overspending, total $108,692,436.00! At least $777,010.00 of the administrative expenses weren't even for Title IV-D / Collection services.
• NON-TANF (should be income ineligible to receive government services at taxpayer expense) collections continued to increase in Fiscal Year 2006, While the collections on cases that are Welfare cases DECLINED according to federal reports.
• Wisconsin has a central child support distribution center for receiving and distributing child support funds and the local county offices no longer perform this intensive function.

The program should become more efficient over time and require less employees and the middle and upper income feuding families should be removed from the program, instead the program is getting larger and claiming to need more funds to operate. The State should not focus their programs on revenue generation but on aid to needy families. This will save the taxpayers immensely. An equal custody mandate would go along way in solving expense problems as well.

A final note on child support is that the I-TEAM should be focusing its attention on ensuring that the State of Wisconsin doesn't steal money from these poor children by not distributing collected child support. In Fiscal Year 2006 there is NET UNDISTRIBUTED CHILD SUPPORT COLLECTIONS OF $8,210,847 according to the Federal Child Support Preliminary Report for 2006. Of that Net UDC at least 8.6% of it has been completely unresolved. If this money is not distributed within one year from the date of collection the state is allowed to escheat the money into its own budget as program income, taking it out of reach of the children it was collected for! This makes it worthwhile for the State to sit on the money. Why not locate these parents and get this money distributed before it is stolen from these poor children!

John Mercure's email address is jmercure@todaystmj4.com.You can voice your opinion on the subject to him via email or peruse his blog, which has a few child support issues listed at http://www.todaystmj4.com/bloggers/mercure. Let me know if you get a response to your inquiries and I would be happy to post them here at this site.

This button just seemed appropriate... but I ask.. will the residents of California truly overcome such tyranny or just let it pass without a fight?

Basically, I call laws like the above a "Minority Report Approach" to legislation, based on the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. The premise of the movie was that three "pre-cognitives" could see into the future and determine a crime before it was committed and arrest the individual before they engaged in the criminal activity. Only one problem, the "pre-cogs" didn't always agree so the "system" would cover up the mistakes of the pre-cogs. Also, the movie raises an interesting philosophy that since an act was not committed yet, could they be found truly guilty of the crime "before it even happened?" In Tom Cruise's case, he demonstrated that the future was not always certain. In the above California Legislation, California Senators are attempting to force someone to perform an act before there is even a crime, as required by our Constitution. But...this is family court right? Now remember that child support is merely a civil debt and no crime has been committed leading up to the order of such debt to be paid to another party.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Constitution, the document that
restricts governmental powers, there was an Amendment that completed
Ratification on December 6, 1865. Under US Const. Amendment 13 Sec. 1 "Neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Either California isn't part of the United States, or California and other states
are trying to take more authority than what they actually have. The

The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Kozminski (1988), has defined involuntary servitude as "compulsory service by the use of physical restraint or injury, or by the use or threat of coercion through legal process."
Essentially the program as defined above, as well
as the many court orders forcing individuals to participate in
government welfare programs without compensation because there exists a
civil debt or other civil judgment, is nothing more than a return to
the slave trade and indentured servitude that was outlawed just a mere
142 years ago.

The child support program rewards the states for actually creating broken homes and is an obstacle to shared equal parenting. Check out http://www.nationwideblueprint.com for more information about the program.

Articles are coming out across the board in Virginia and other states portraying that the child support program is ripping off poor mothers and poor families because of a $25.00 application fee after it has been determined the agency has distributed $500.00 or more in a calendar year. The propaganda couldn't be further from the truth and is simply untrue. My general response is that the State bureaucracies are just trying to solidify their position as savior to keep their jobs by rewarding a single party with a negative outcome, which is broken homes. Our irresponsible and wasteful government at work. My general editorial response (198 words) is pretty much as follows:

Federal cuts will not put more W. VA
families on welfare. This is a smokescreen that state bureaucracies put up in
an attempt to maintain comfy government employment with lush benefits.

The child support programs were intended to recuperate money
provided by the federal government to the states for welfare. This turned the
states that participate in voluntary Title IV-D programs into taxpayer
subsidized collection agencies. States now focus on revenue generation by
forcing middle and upper-income families into these “free for all” welfare
programs.

The states have created their own dilemma by trying to
artificially increase their participation numbers instead of focusing on families
that need them most, the lower income participants. Only 11% of the cases
should qualify for services on the taxpayer dime; people already eligible for
other state welfare programs.

There are sufficient private collection firms to make up the
difference of any budget cuts by removing nearly half the caseload which
shouldn’t qualify or be eligible for free government services in the first
place. Adding restrictions and removing income ineligible families will
streamline the agency and force the state to focus their programs on aid to
needy families and save the taxpayers immensely.