Ken McCall: The minefield of new welfare laws

Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

A METRO cop is fed up because although he has custody of his children, he hasn't gotten "dime one" of court-ordered child support from his ex-wife.

A divorced mother is beside herself because although she knows where her ex-husband is, local authorities don't seem interested.

A divorced father feels "bulldozed" because although he pays child support, "he has no rights."

A woman is forced to feed, house and buy medical insurance for her granddaughter because her ex-son-in-law has only made two support payments in almost a year.

A man who has joint custody of his three kids worries about new child-support laws because his ex-wife has a history of -- and a criminal record for-- harassing him in every way she can.

The calls have been steadily pouring last week after an Aug. 25 SUN story discussed the many weapons in the new welfare reform act to help states enforce child support orders.

One thing is crystal clear: It's a war zone out there.

And if this unscientific cross-section is any indication, the shells are flying in every possible direction across the no-person's-land of child support and custody.

Consider just a few stories I heard last week.

Ron, for example, is a Metro Police officer who has custody of his 7- and 9-year-old children, provides a live-in housekeeper to take care of them and has never received a payment from his ex-wife.

She owes him $8,000 in child support, has been to jail once already for nonpayment and has another court hearing coming up this week, but Ron's not optimistic.

"She has never paid dime one," he says.

Instead, he says, she prefers to live as a "house girlfriend and jump from relationship to relationship."

What good is the system, he wants to know. They can't force somebody to work.

When the judge did have her in court, Ron says, disgusted, he gave her two days in jail and a 90-day suspended sentence.

"If you're going to spank someone's little butt," he says, "you give them 90 days, and you make them serve 90 days.

"That would be a deterrent, because they're not going to want to be in jail that long every year."

Or take the case of Kelly, who calls in from Baltimore.

Her husband, whom she divorced 3 1/2 years ago, owes $8,500 in child support and hasn't made a payment since May 1.

Her ex-husband lives in Las Vegas with his father, she says, "so he doesn't have to work."

She's remarried and has a job, but her 9-year-old son has medical bills and her new husband is in a child custody and support battle of his own.

Meanwhile, she's caught in vicious bureaucratic buck-passing circle.

"When I contacted social services here," she says from Baltimore, "they told me it was out of their hands, it was up to Las Vegas. But when I contacted social services in Las Vegas, they said it was out of their hands. They can't make him work. Oh, well.

"Those are her exact words."

Then there's Jerri, who has had to support both her daughter, Tina, and 1-year-old granddaughter because the father can't or won't pay support.

Tina and her ex-husband got an annulment in November. Three supportless months later, she went to the district attorney but still didn't get a support check until May. She got her second -- and last -- check in June.

In the meantime, Jerri says, her daughter was denied food stamps and medical assistance because she owns -- or makes payments on -- a 1994 Rodeo.

"How is this child supposed to live?" Jerri asks, "I had to go get medical insurance for her."

The deadbeat, meanwhile, "get every right that any poor sucker who works three jobs to support his children gets."

Now he's trying to take her daughter to court to get custody of the baby on weekends.

"If a mother wants to protect her child and the court won't accept that the father is danger for this child," she asks, "what choice does the mother have but to go and hide?

"I think Nevada has the worst child-support laws in the world."

The stories go on and on. Mothers and fathers and grandparents and friends venting their anger, despair and frustration about irresponsible others and the laws that somehow have to be drawn straight through the most irrational of battlefields.

It's a sad picture they paint. A picture of sorrow and suffering, heartache and tears, arguments and violence, and police and judges and lawyers and jail.

And standing there in the background of all these pictures are the shadowy figures of the children, trying to stay out of the crossfire, trying to figure out who to love, trying to make sense out of the senseless.