FW: Leaflet for handing out in Richmond on Monday & 20th
D'Arcy L McGreer
This is the final “short” document that can be handed out to your legislatures and others that you can printout or email if you will not be meeting with us on the 20th in Richmond. Go to website below and the FFV google group link for messages about the 20th.
This link takes you to the Courts of Justice Committee agenda for the 20th. http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?141+doc+H0810120. There is a slight chance the bill will be voted on the late afternoon of the 20th. If you want to make your statement to the committee this is the time to come. For those of you who do not pay child support and used to your testimony will be particularly credible because you are not going to be directly affected by the committees actions. Your attendance would be greatly appreciated. For those of you in this situation make sure you make this point in your testimony. The rest of you still come and tell them how unfair child support is now and will be only worse. Read the messages in the Google group about this bill to get more information about this bill.
Finally please forward this message to anyone you think should know and care about this issue.
Sender of this message: D’Arcy L McGreer, Cell: 703-389-4496. 2200 Wilsom Blvd, Ste 102 – 271, Arlington, VA 22201-3324. FFV website: http://www.virginiafathers.org/
How to Put More Parents Behind Bars
A bill now in the House of Delegates (HB 933) would increase already exorbitant child support amounts in Virginia. It will result in more parents (mostly fathers) going to jail because they can’t pay large amounts of money – supposedly to be used for children that they hardly see, except for very restricted “visitation” periods.
The alleged justification for increasing child support is that the cost of raising children has gone up. However, increased child-raising costs are already accounted for in the existing rules on child support. These rules are indexed for inflation – as parental income rises, so too do child support amounts.
Virginia law and practice affecting divorced and never-married parents is heavily biased. Despite rules on gender equity, only 6 percent of custodial parents are fathers. Noncustodial fathers, who are already so disadvantaged, don’t deserve to have new child support burdens imposed upon them.
Tell your delegate or senator that you want to see HB 933 thrown out!
For more information, see the attached note by Fathers For Virginia
Current Plans to Increase Child Support in Virginia
Statement by Fathers For Virginia
There’s a plan in the General Assembly to increase significantly the amount of child support that noncustodial parents in Virginia must pay. This plan, embodied in House Bill 933, would affect approximately 900,000 people in Virginia. But it's receiving little attention in the media -- or indeed from those members of the Virginia legislature who aren't directly involved in the effort to raise the child support amounts. At first glance, the issue seems complex and obscure. But once you understand what's going on, you'll be able to see the damaging effects this increase would have. We’ll try to explain it here.
In Virginia, as in other states, the amount of child support that noncustodial parents must pay to custodial parents is largely determined by a set of tables in a domestic relations statute. These tables are known as the child support guideline. The guideline ties the amount of child support to parental income and to the number of children. Of course, setting child support in this way will always include arbitrary elements and may have odd effects in individual situations. However, the guideline provides some degree of objectivity, and we don't object to the underlying principle. What we object to is raising child support amounts through techniques that are discriminatory against noncustodial parents, nearly all of whom are fathers. We also object to basic injustices in the existing child support guideline. These injustices include the failure to take any account of a noncustodial parent's continuing expenses for his children, plus the double-counting involved in ignoring the tax treatment of child support payments.
Those who want increases in child support through legislation say that the amounts in Virginia's child support guideline haven't been increased for many years, and the cost of raising children has gone up over that period. However, they ignore the fact that the existing guideline already is indexed for inflation. Under the present guideline, as the income of parents goes up, so too do child support amounts. The changes now proposed would increase child support burdens for noncustodial parents, even if their incomes haven't risen. More parents will fall behind on their payments. Keep in mind that getting behind on child support may have devastating consequences for noncustodial parents, 94 percent of whom are fathers. They can be sent to debtors' prison if they can't pay. Even if they can stay out of jail, they can lose their drivers’ and other licenses, as well as having their passports invalidated.
We don't argue that the Virginia child support guideline should stay exactly as it is. We say it should be restructured to take appropriate account of the noncustodial parent's fixed expenses. These fixed expenses include housing costs, which continue even during the time that the children are with the custodial parent. Fathers should be allowed to live in accommodation adequate for the visitation periods when the children are with the fathers. The current guideline simply assumes that the custodial parent pays all the expenses associated with the children. That discriminatory provision must change.
We urge another immediate change to the Virginia guideline. At present, the guideline contains a provision known as the "cliff effect." The cliff effect says that any time the children spend with the noncustodial parent has no effect on the child support he has to pay to the custodial parent, until the children are spending more than 90 days a year with him. The end result of this rule is that lawyers advise custodial parents not to agree to more than 90 days of visitation, since this would adversely affect their child support entitlement. This is a longstanding problem with the guideline. In the past, it’s been argued that substituting a sliding scale principle for the 90-day rule would make calculations of child support far too complicated. However, technological advances have exploded this argument. The widespread use of computer programs such as VADER (the Virginia Attorneys' Divorce Evidence Resource) and Virginia CivilWare has greatly simplified the calculation of child support. There’s no longer any need to retain the cliff effect in the guideline. Child support should follow the child. Fathers should no longer be told that they can't have their children for more than 90 days a year.
Our group tries to get over the message that the proposed increase in child support is not simply a matter of making things more difficult for those villainous "deadbeat dads'' who feature from time to time in the media. Despite all the very rigorous enforcement techniques adopted in Virginia, including incarceration for non-payment, reputable studies show that about half of those who are behind on their child support simply cannot pay. They're dead-broke, not deadbeat. Raising the amounts noncustodial parents have to pay their exes will simply make this worse. Already, Virginia has adopted a program known as the Intensive Care Management Program that provides for very intrusive supervision of noncustodial parents who are regarded as having valid reasons, such as unemployment or poor health, for their inability to pay. This program must be hugely expensive to taxpayers. The number of noncustodial parents within it can only rise if their child support liability is increased by the current plan to raise child support still further.
We know this issue seems complicated, but it’s very important to families in Virginia. Get in touch with your delegate or senator and say you don't want to pile more burdens on fathers. Kill H.B 933, and fix the discriminatory features of the present Virginia child support guideline!
Compiled by Fathers For Virginia, an organization that provides support for divorced and never-married fathers, and lobbies for constructive changes in domestic relations law.
Questions should be directed to nim...@verizon.net
For more information, visit our website, http://virginiafathers.org/.
January 20, 2014