After years of raising two sons by herself, Amy (not her real name) was happy to finally receive some money from her ex. No need to continue haranguing the guy, who, after years as a deadbeat dad, began paying child support—wages garnished by his employer each week. "He was owning up to his responsibilities," she says.
Then the child-support payments stopped—but not because her ex stopped paying. In talks with him, she'd discovered his employer garnished his wages weekly, then sat on the checks, mailing them out seemingly at a whim—one week late, two weeks late, a month late, then in quick-hitting spurts, days and weeks apart. Then, nothing.
When pressed, Amy says, her ex's employer promised an investigation. That was late September. She hasn't received a check since.
"There are too many parents who are not paying child support, the ones that are shouldn't have these problems," says Amy, who moved from here to Illinois in 1993 and contacted the local DA's office after Illinois officials told her their hands were tied. "How many other workers from this company and other companies that have child support garnished from their wages are going through the same thing?"
The answer depends on who's asked.
According to C.A. Watt, director of the Family Support Division for the Clark County District Attorney's office: "It's rare."
Watt says federal rules already in place, which allow the government to punish scofflaw employers, are often enough.
According to Ernest del Casal, founder and director of Divorced Fathers Equal Rights, a private men's organization group: "He [Watt] is an idiot. Our DA's office is a mess. These things happen all the time."
"You've got guys getting letters saying they are not paying when they are," del Casal says. "They have to go to court, spend money and spend time to prove they are already paying. I sympathize with the lady because this creates problems for both of the parents, not to mention the children."
According to James Smith, who's practiced law in Las Vegas since 1980, covering divorce law for 15 years: "It's not a routine thing, especially with federal laws on automatic wage withholding, but things can happen. Small employers like construction companies sometimes do things under the table."
So there's no way to quantify the problem.
Here's how child-support collection in Nevada is supposed to work: After wages have been garnished, employers have 10 days to send the money to the state collection and disbursement unit (SCaDU), which sends payments to custodial parents; if employers fail to send wage garnishments to SCaDU, Watt says, the DA can step in and threaten contempt. Companies can then be fined.
The 222-employee DA's office has 90 case managers handling 87,000 cases—nearly one per 1,000 cases.
"You can tell the lady you talked to to call this office and we will get to work," says Watt, saying that his employees, though overworked, "do a good job."
Those queried agree on the overworked part. Not necessarily on the good job part.
Amy has called the DA's office, she says, and has badgered her caseworker and gotten little from it, except thoughts about hiring an attorney—an added financial burden.
It could take up to six months to get a court date via the DA's office, "so you almost always need to go above the case worker," says del Casal, who's also critical of the Nevada Operations of Multi-Automated Data Systems (NOMADS). (Callers with personal identification numbers issued by the state can phone 486-1646 and obtain information about child-support payments, court dates and locations and local child-support office hours and locations). He says it's a nightmare to navigate. And it's useless, Amy says, if you want questions answered.
"You're talking to a machine."
For custodial parents living out of state, Smith says, lag time for action on a claim can stretch to a year. He recently received a call from a woman in the Midwest with a complaint similar to Amy's: Her ex's employer would wait two months to send the checks. He says threatening absconders with litigation, especially big companies, usually does the trick. Also effective are private groups specializing in child support, some of which are "incredibly aggressive."
Meantime, Amy fights. Her sons are grown and self-sufficient. So, though the back pay isn't a critical need anymore, it's still money she says she deserves. She's been paid through August 29. Since then, nothing.
She waxes philosophical: "Can you imagine how many headaches this would prevent a case worker and former couples from having if the employer did the right thing?"