Trying To Collect Overdue Child Support In Florida Is The Absolute Worst
A recent report in the Tampa Bay Times tells the stories of families who have struggled to collect child support through the Florida Department of Revenue only to encounter endless delays or exes who game the system by paying trivial amounts of money toward their overdue balances just to continue stringing the Department of Revenue along. Of course, the people who suffer the most from this are the children. Charity has needed braces since she was a teenager, but her father paid only a tiny fraction of the child support he owed, and her mother had no money left over after paying for basic necessities, so Charity did not get braces until she was 21 and could pay the orthodontist bills with money she had earned working at Starbucks. Bridget has not seen her father in years, and he has not paid child support; he refuses to pay, because he does not believe in divorce. Aiden’s parents live two hours apart, and his father is way behind on child support; his parents hand him off to each other at roadside rest areas and police stations, and as the years have gone by, money has grown tighter on both sides of the family. These families have been dealing with unpaid child support for years, while the bureaucracy gives them the runaround. The best way to avoid this situation is to contact a Boca Raton child support lawyer before or after your divorce.
Florida Parents Lament About the “Child Support Carousel”
Co-parenting when money is tight, or when one parent claims that money is tighter than it is, is no fun, but it is especially bad in Florida. The Florida Department of Revenue has been tasked with collecting more than $27 million in overdue child support, more than any other state. Alabama comes in second with $6 million. About 40 percent of the parents seeking child support enforcement through the Department of Revenue are White, 40 percent are Black, and 20 percent are Hispanic or Latino, although these groups make up about 51 percent, 15 percent, and 26 percent of the total population of Florida. (These figures are approximate, and some families belong to more than one race or to racial groups other than the aforementioned ones.)
Even the Department of Revenue employees interviewed in the Tampa Bay Times report expressed frustration with the system. One problem that they identified is that, unlike in other states, Florida does not assign a specific caseworker to each family; this means that, every time parents contact the Department of Revenue, they have to tell their story over again from the beginning.
Contact Schwartz | White About Collecting Past Due Child Support
A South Florida child support lawyer can be much more efficient than a revolving door of caseworkers at helping you collect the child support payments your ex-spouse owes you and has been evading for years. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
tampabay.com/special-reports/2022/05/04/floridas-child-support-carousel-exhausts-parents-costs-kids/
