A Question Of Support: Families Agree It's About More Than Money

Rachael Morris is remarkably poised for a 13-year-old. She gets A's and B's in school, plays the piano and tenor saxophone and has ambitions to be an emergency-room doctor.

Rachael exudes a calm maturity when she describes her relationship with her father, Richard, who has been divorced from her mother for eight years.

"As a person, I don't like him," she says. "In a lot of ways he's let me down."

Part of the disappointment is that her father owes his ex-wife Sharon $39,050 in back child support for Rachael.

The money would be nice, Rachael says; at this point, she could use it for college savings. But even more important than that, "I'd like to have a dad. He's not really there for me."

Morris says, "I'm not an angel," but says he does love his daughter, and agrees he should pay something.

Rachael is hardly alone in yearning for a father's support.

The pervasive societal problem of unpaid child support is partly about money - in this state only about half the support ordered in a year is actually collected - but also about the emotional tearing up of families.

In King County, there are 2,000 parents facing contempt charges for not paying support, and there are warrants out on almost 700, because they continue to defy the law.

Wednesday, Morris - who'd had a warrant hanging over his head for two years - became one of the 254 targeted for arrest in a "roundup." The Office of Support Enforcement, the King County Sheriff's Office and prosecutors have made "deadbeat" parents a priority this month and most of the arrests are yet to come. Time and money constraints usually make such cases a lower priority - something that authorities hope to change with a proposal to dedicate four full-time officers to pursue parents who don't pay.

Meanwhile, they rely on this month's roundup to generate publicity and put a little fear into other recalcitrant parents who owe child support. Support-enforcement caseworkers comb files for the most egregious nonpayers to target; plumb computer databases and interview people who know them to pinpoint their whereabouts. They order driver's-license photos to give the King County Sheriff's Office.

To track Morris, King County detectives Christina Bartlett and Scott Badics spend a fruitless evening searching bars where he's said to hang out. The next night they arrest him at his Lake City apartment house, where he complains that, "I have nothing! Look around you - this is the Lake City 'hood!"

Unable to make bail - $2,500 for the child support, a total of $3,600 when you add two failures to appear, for a DUI and driving with a suspended license - Morris spends the night in jail.

"James" and "Annie"

No sooner do the plain-clothed detectives drop Morris off at jail than they head out for a suburb to find a guy who owes $50,000 in child-support - like Morris, he's classified in the top 30 percent of targeted parents.

After checking two houses and a notorious bar - where a patrol officer says he knows him as a small-time drug user and dealer - the detectives still are looking for him. So we'll just call him "James."

James' ex-wife "Annie" works two jobs, including most nights and weekends, to support two children and pay off debts she says her ex piled up before they divorced. She worries about leaving her daughter unsupervised and about their lack of health insurance.

At one point, she took off work three times to seek state aid so as not to lose her house and to put food on the table.

"I go up to the window, and she looks at my paperwork and says, `you work?' Like it was bad. I got so upset. It was hard for me to do that.

"I snatched my papers. `Yeah I work! I pay taxes! I help pay your salary!

" `I'll be back when I have nothing and then you can support me and my kids!' "

Like Annie, Sharon Morris works two jobs, in Everett and Redmond. Over 20 years, she's worked her way up in a concrete company from clerk to payroll supervisor. Most evenings, she also works folding clothes at a warehouse store.

Richard Morris was ordered to pay her $600 a month in child support - an amount relatively high for one child, but considered justified by the state because he was making $35,000 a year as a computer technician.

But he lost his job after the divorce and was beset by personal problems, he says. Sharon says she offered to lower the amount to $200 a month if he'd really pay it; truthfully, she thinks $600 is "outrageously high." The paperwork never was done; they disagree about why.

But, like her daughter, Sharon is concerned less about money and more about what she says is Richard's lack of involvement in Rachael's life.

Richard complains that he doesn't get his rightful share of visitation, although he acknowledges that denial of visitation does not excuse a parent from child support. He adds that, without a driver's license (he hasn't been able to renew it because of unpaid fines, he says) it's been hard for him to visit.

But Sharon and Rachael also tell of times he never showed as promised. Rachael was particularly hurt on New Year's Eve when she said he left her behind on a sidewalk because he had other plans. Morris noted it was at her grandmother's house.

Richard, for his part, says Sharon has done a great job raising their daughter. In fact, he says, "Don't tell my ex-wife, but I still like her. She's very industrious and a damned good mother."

But Sharon Morris notes it hasn't been easy, and if it hadn't been for the support of her mother and her mother-in-law, she wouldn't have made it. The revolving door

Susan Grey Princehouse, King County senior deputy prosecutor in the family-support section, notes that fathers who can afford a lawyer don't usually end up in contempt court, which is held three times a week.

"What you get here are job-hoppers; the chronically unemployed; men with substance-abuse problems; guys who are in trouble with the law; not your high-priced doctors or lawyers."

Some have legitimate excuses - such as injuries - but many have been here before. They don't pay, don't show up to court; more warrants are issued. The revolving door costs a lot of money. Still, prosecutors persist, because the state collects $4.2 million a year in the contempt process.

When a parent makes bail, the bail is paid directly toward his or her child's support. Quips Princehouse: "Deadbeat parents are God's chosen people. They'll turn their pockets out and say, `I don't have a dime,' to the judge. Then once the jail door clangs, the money (bail) flows from heaven. A short time later they're walking out."

She says, "Once they're in jail, we ask the judge to give them a work-release job."

Prosecutors get cynical about the stories they hear. "Sometimes we get some who quit their job to fulfill the American dream - start a little business," says Princehouse. "We say, the first family is not supposed to fulfill your entrepreneurial spirit. Do it on your own time. The custodial parent doesn't have the luxury of saying, `I won't feed the kids or pay rent.' "

Defense attorneys and fathers'-rights advocates see another side:

They see men who often are not sophisticated about the system, and instead of dealing with their support problems and trying to get the amount they must pay modified to fit their circumstances, they let the bills mount. Then they may work under the table, or go into hiding.

Another common circumstance, they say: the man who suddenly finds he's a parent and owes years of back support.

David MacDonald, director of United Fathers of America, which maintains a threadbare office in Smith Tower, serves as a paralegal and helps fathers - and some mothers, too - find a compromise through the system.

He says the other most prevalent reason for not paying is when the noncustodial parent believes withholding support money is his only weapon against a "completely unreasonable" custodial parent. MacDonald complains there are no resources for the noncustodial parent in such circumstances.

Princehouse says a pilot program that the prosecutor's office has started, called the Alternatives to Contempt Enforcement, does attempt to address that. The program offers intensive case management to parents faced with jail for nonpayment - connecting them with what they need, from drug treatment or job training, to get jobs and pay support. The program will connect them with help to get needed adjustments to support amounts, or get rightful visitation with their kids. "But we say, `you still owe. But we'll help you with your other problems.' "

Going to court

Morris' arrest Wednesday night shocks Sharon - after all, as he tells the court, he's been living in the same place for seven years and hasn't been hiding.

When the next day Morris appears in contempt court before family-law commissioner Carlos Velategui, deputy prosecutor Kim Schnuelle asks that he remain in jail. She says Morris is a flight risk.

But Morris is contrite, saying he hadn't been acting "in an adult" manner, but would begin to do so. He just got a job "on a bus line," he says, making $15 an hour.

Velategui releases him until he can meet with a public defender and in the meantime orders him to pay half his wages for Rachael's support. Morris says he'll fork over money Thursday, when he gets paid; "it will be a major solution for all of us." Velategui orders Morris to appear in court April 30.

Morris promises he'll show up.

Rachael hopes that, this time, she won't be disappointed. ------------------------------- Voices...

"I work four jobs to support three kids; day care is $1,200. He changed his name. He owes me $28,000. Now he's paying $86 a week, and says, `At least you've got something.' I make $12 too much for food stamps."

"My ex-wife is a self-employed physician. I got custody of our two kids. She's stopped support, and understates her income by $20,000."

"He hardly ever pays and his last check bounced. Last winter my heat was cut off twice. He says, `I'm trying,' but I notice he has eight tickets to the Mariner games, he has a motorcycle, he goes out of town."

"My ex-husband is a three-time deadbeat dad. I didn't know it, I wouldn't have even dated him if I had, but he abandoned two kids in Oregon, he was on the run for five years."

"All my friends are single moms. We trade and barter child care and clothes and other things to survive."

Source: Members of Association for Children for Enforcement of Support.

------------------------------- ...counter-voices

He'd had a vasectomy in the 1970s; then his wife gave birth to twins. When the couple divorced eight years later, he filed to "disestablish" paternity. The children were devastated, and the court ruled he had to pay anyway.

He was one of three guys who had had sex with the woman at the same time. Unbeknownst to him, she got pregnant. Four years later, she went to the prosecutor. He was the third guy ordered to take a paternity test. Bingo. The bill: $240 a month, plus $9,083 in back support, payable at $25 per month.

He'd been paying the mother directly, and kept records - which burned in a house fire. The mother claimed he hadn't paid a dime. Because his bank records only went back so far, he couldn't prove payments for three years and had to pay - again.

He was ordered to pay $400 a month to support his two children. A bad car accident put him out of work but a judge insisted he pay anyway. Eventually an appeals judge sided with him, after he'd racked up a mound of legal bills.

Source: United Fathers of America and the law offices of Dancey & Cassady.