"Private agencies help find debtors; Parents using firms instead of courts to chase down unpaid child support"

The Ann Arbor News
January 13, 2003
By Liz Cobbs

Nancy Fox tried for nearly 10 years to collect child support from her ex-husband, who moved out of state two years after their 1989 divorce.

Fox received child support in 1990, but the payments stopped the following year. Since then, Fox said, she went at least twice a year to Washtenaw County's Friend of the Court office in downtown Ann Arbor, hoping that something could be done.

"I kept going back to the Friend of the Court because I felt there was hope," said the 47-year-old Ypsilanti Township resident. "They always told me they were trying. They were always doing something, but nothing ever happened."

That was until late 1999 when on the advice of a friend, Fox contacted a private child support collection agency, called Supportkids. By January 2000, the Austin, Texas-based agency had located Fox's ex-husband, discovered he had just settled a lawsuit and, from those proceeds, collected $11,500 in back child support for her now 13-year-old son.

Fox is among a growing number of custodial parents who are turning to private collection agencies as an alternative to the state-operated Friend of the Court system, an agency of the Circuit Court's family division that enforces court orders relating to child custody, child support and parenting time.

The movement has not gone unnoticed by Michigan lawmakers, who approved legislation, effective in March, that allows the state to hire private agencies to track down delinquent parents and collect unpaid child support.

The bill was included in an 11-bill package lawmakers approved last fall in response to calls from then Gov. John Engler and Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Maura Corrigan to improve the state's child support system.

Some of the legislation took effect Dec. 1, including a provision that allows parents to opt out of Friend of the Court if they can settle custody, visitation and child support issues on their own. That option is already available in Washtenaw County.

In addition, newly elected state Attorney General Mike Cox recently announced he was setting up a new child support collections division that would aggressively track down deadbeat parents. Cox campaigned on the child support enforcement issue and said that he could relate to custodial parents' frustration, since he had raised his 19-year-old daughter without child support from her mother.

Private agencies say they are not trying to replace state programs, just helping those parents the states cannot help.

"We complement the work government agencies do because we can handle cases they cannot," said Vanessa Diaz, vice president of Supportkids. "Private agencies are not the solution, they're only a part of the solution. It's going to take cooperation by government agencies working with private agencies to collect the billions of dollars of child support owed in the country."

Supportkids, founded in 1991 by Casey Hoffman, a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Texas child support enforcement program, handles cases where there are arrearages in the court-ordered child support.

Unlike government agencies, Diaz said case workers at private agencies have a lighter case load and more time and resources to work on cases, including the tough interstate cases in which a parent has left the state without providing forwarding information.

One thing private agencies don't have is the power to bring delinquent parents into court once they're located, Washtenaw County Friend of the Court Judah Garber said. In addition, Garber said, agencies also charge a large percentage fee for their work.

The 20 to 35 percent fee that agencies charge is contingent upon whether they can collect the child support owed. Fox said Supportkids told her up front that it would take out 34 percent of whatever it collected.

"I thought, 'Well, having some child support money is better than having none at all,"' she said.

What Fox didn't expect was for the Friend of the Court to step in and have the money routed through its office.

"They started charging me a fee but they hadn't done any work," Fox said.

Garber said he cannot talk about specific cases like Fox's, but did say that state law requires that child support collections come to the Friend of the Court, whether the agency finds the missing parent or not, and not through a third party. In addition, administrative fees and surcharges are established by a state statute. He said the agency or a parent can get a court order to redirect the money from the Friend of the Court.

Washtenaw County's Friend of the Court charges a $3.75 per month administrative fee on open accounts, Garber said. Legislation passed in 1996 established an 8-percent surcharge on arrearages.

Fox suggests that state agencies like the Friend of the Court begin working with private agencies to help custodial parents, but keep the focus on getting money for the child. "Friend of the Court is trying to move other agencies out of the picture and trying to do the job all by themselves," Fox said. "They need to open up more and let these organizations work with them."

©2003, The Ann Arbor News. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.