NPO: Gilbert Tso's Case: For States, Child Support Is All About The Money From Uncle Sam

Article here. Excerpt:

'Would you like to know just how dogged states are when it comes to collecting child support? Gilbert Tso’s story offers a good illustration of exactly that. In his case, an Illinois court that plainly has no jurisdiction of the case went ahead and issued a child support order anyway, plus hefty arrearages just so, if it collects anything from Tso, it can chalk it up as another “success” and get paid by the federal government’s Office of Child Support Enforcement. Maybe the Illinois court is onto something. After all, if a court doesn’t have to have jurisdiction of a case to issue a support order, why not issue more of them? Why not pick fathers in Alaska, Maine, Florida, or anywhere else? Hey, you might get lucky, and every time you do, Uncle Sam sends the state more money.

It’s not like states haven’t been in that racket before. It doesn’t happen as much anymore, but it used to be that, when states wanted to “establish paternity” for a child, they would simply give notice to any man with a name the same as - or similar to — that of the man named by the mother as the father of her child. So, if she named John Smith or Jose Rodriguez, the state could send out a letter announcing to the man that he’d been named as father. Of course if they sent the letter to the wrong man, he’d likely take the attitude that he’d never heard of the mother, much less had sex with her, so the court hearing didn’t apply to him. Then, when he didn’t show up for the hearing, he’d be adjudicated the father and a support order would be issued against him. When he protested he’d be told, “You had your opportunity to contest the matter but failed to do so. The matter is now res judicata. Pay up. For the next 18 years.” Meanwhile, the actual dad — the one with half the responsibility for bringing the child into the world, the one whose DNA the child carries, the one who might want to know about and care for his son or daughter — would never be the wiser and neither would the child.

That system of tagging any man who was stupid enough to believe the child support system wanted only actual fathers to pay support for children who were actually theirs so infuriated one California judge that he risked his job by simply refusing to go along with what was plainly a scam.'