Wednesday, March 17, 1999

Governor Jesse Ventura
75 Constitution Avenue
Room 130 State Capitol
St. Paul, MN 55155

Dear Governor Ventura,

I want you to know that I, along with tens of thousands of parents stand firmly behind you in your response to the single mother who taunted you on your Capitol steps. This is how the exchange was reported in the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press of February 11, 1999:

"I don't want to seem hard-core, but why did you become a parent?'' the governor responded to a single mother who shouted out a complaint about a lack of state help. ``It takes two people to parent. It takes two.''

``Sometimes one of them walks away,'' shouted a woman.

``You're asking for (help with) a social problem,'' Ventura replied. ``You're asking government to make up for mistakes. Is that government's job, to make up for your mistakes?"

We feel that you have hit the nail on the head. Parenting takes two parents. However, government's response to the crises faced by families in the 1990's is to take steps which have the result of destroying family relationships by subsidizing divorce and single parenthood. Put bluntly, no-fault divorce, coupled with sole custody and high child support awards provide a lucrative incentive to divorce.

In the last twenty-five years the United States has witnessed an unprecedented increase in divorce. Because the tendency of Family Courts to award sole residential custody to one parent (in over 90% of cases to the mother), and because state legislatures and the federal government have chosen to emphasize child support enforcement over and above promoting shared parenting, this has led to a situation where nearly 40% of all children in the United States are growing up without any significant contact from one of their parents.

Current wisdom seems to be that, with the help of various government programs and rigorous child support collection procedures, children only need one parent. However, statistics prove that the entire system is a complete failure. Along with the increase in divorce, we have seen teen pregnancy, teen promiscuousness and juvenile delinquency increase, while academic performance has steadily decreased. In fact, by whatever measure you use, children are worse off now than they were twenty-five years ago. The simple fact is, children need both parents. No government program can take the place of an involved parent. Furthermore, it has been found by one study that states that rank highest in child support collections, also rate lowest in child well-being.

Unfortunately, under the current system of Family Law, families facing the crisis of divorce are tossed immediately into a highly adversarial, winner-take-all custody and child support order establishment system that in the end creates a "noncustodial parent" who is eventually driven into exile with limited time for "visitation" with their children, and facing exorbitant child support orders which make creating any kind of life after divorce an impossibility. The failure of this system is highlighted by the draconian measures that have been enacted in order to prop it up.

By federal mandate, states must now have the following measures (among many others) in force:

1. Expanded Access to Information Sources. Almost everything you do, own or use leaves some kind of trail that the state can now track in order to more effectively collect child support.

2. Expanded Administrative Authority. It is increasingly unnecessary for states to obtain court orders to seize your assets, or compel your compliance. This raises severe due process concerns for some of us.

3. Administratively Seize Assets. Procedures for seizing your assets have been streamlined.

4. Immediate Income Withholding. This doesn't seem to bother many people in the collection industry. They don't seem to understand how intrusive this really is.

5. Matching Financial Records Data. Child Support Collection Agencies now can interface with banks, credit unions, insurance companies, whatever.

6. New Hire Directories. Under the federal law, states are to require employers to report all new employees within 20 days of hire. Forty-five states included similar general mandates in their legislation and another two did so administratively. The law also requires states to establish new hire directories, instructing employers to make reports using W-4 forms (enacted by 40 states, administratively adopted by two) and requiring cross-checking with the state case registry (enacted by 29 states, administratively adopted by six). Privacy concerns led a few states, including Colorado and Kansas, to require that new hire information be purged from government records after two years.

7. Administrative Liens. As many have discovered, you don't have to have any assets to be the recipient of one of these. They can now place these liens against your person. This can be done administratively, without a hearing in court.

8. Collection of Social Security Numbers. By collecting social security numbers on official state documents, the state acquires a paper trail that enables the child support enforcement agency to locate the correct obligor and pursue delinquent child support accounts. Responding to federal requirements, 39 states enacted legislation to require social security numbers on applications for professional, occupational, driver’s, marriage and recreational licenses.

9. Confidentiality and Sharing of Child Support Records. What this means is that all the custodial parent must do to remain hidden from the child support obligated NCP is allege domestic abuse, or the fear of abuse, in order for all information about their address to be hidden from the person paying the child support.

How much further is all this going to go? What is next? When even these measures fail to collect the money that is supposedly out there, will we see work camps for non-custodial parents who fall behind on child support?

ANCPR thinks it is time to take a fresh new look at this national crisis. We can start by recognizing the real needs of children, and working from there. Children need involved parents. If government wants to help children, then it should get out of the business of splitting families up, and facilitate, as much as possible, parental involvement. The best way to accomplish this is to pass a national presumption of shared parenting in all custody hearings, and to de-emphasize child support collection and enforcement.

Wishing you all the best,

Lowell Jaks