For quite a while now, I've been operating - incorrectly - under the assumption that California receives in the neighborhood of $90 million dollars per year in federal subsidy for its child support collection and case management efforts; I’m getting old because I simply cannot recall from whence I came to have that figure. Recently, at the suggestion of a very helpful, empathetic, and smart guy in Sacramento, I contacted the California Legislative Analysts Office, and low and behold, I was able to obtain verifiable and accurate information. In the current 2012/2013 fiscal year, California is scheduled to receive $504 million federal dollars for its child support collection and case management efforts. I wish to be clear here, that particular $504 million is for child support collection and child support case management only! Not incidentally, those federal funds never make their way into the lives of children of divorce or impoverished kids, instead financing the salaries, paid vacation time, medical benefits and pensions of those employed by - or retired from - the family law and child support collection Gestapo’s.
The analyst who was kind enough to speak with me went on to say, of that $504 million dollars, $61 million is strictly for the maintenance and repair of the computer system the state, county, and local child support enforcement workers use to track the comings and goings of child support money, and to monitor where Dad’s are etc.
Now, if we bear in mind that the only federally funded study ever conducted on the subject of child support showed that - when employed - men pay between 83 and 91% of all court ordered child support, we begin to see the big picture; why are the tax payers financing child support collection and enforcement if these guys are already paying their child support?
Consider, in California alone we have over 8,000 men paying child support for children that DNA evidence has proven they didn’t father. To emancipate those men from this assigned debt would put the state at risk of losing all - or a good portion - of the massive annual federal subsidy I mentioned above; at the risk of stating the obvious, California is but one of fifty! Think about it, then, you do the math…."Best Interest of the Child"?
Not bloody likely