Spotlight on an NCCSO Leader

Meet Sharon Baker

This is my child support story, and there’s no happy ending…yet.

I have one son, and I was divorced in February of 1988. During the last ten years I have received less than $2,500 out of the almost $50,000 in child support that my ex-husband was ordered by the state of Connecticut to pay.

Unfortunately, I live in a state with no options. Just when I found someone to help, a private child support enforcement agency, my state legislators passed a law preventing private child support agencies from helping anyone in my state. Because of this, I now have no child support and no place to turn for help.

I applied for child support enforcement services in Connecticut in April of 1989. My experience with the government was frustrating, sad and stressful. The efforts by the Connecticut child support enforcement agency have resulted in my receiving only 5 percent of the child support that was to be paid by my ex-husband to help support our son.

In fact, one year, rather than intercepting my husband’s IRS tax refund, the Connecticut child support enforcement agency negligently intercepted my own tax refund. As a result, in 1993, I terminated my case with the Connecticut child support enforcement agency. Between 1994 and 1999, I did not receive any child support.

In 1999, after finding out about a private child support enforcement agency from a co-worker, I decided to give it a try. I applied for services, and the private agency was successful in locating my ex-husband. The private agency went after him and obtained wage withholding from his employer. I actually started receiving child support payments as a result of their efforts. They even hired an attorney here in Connecticut to help me in court hearings to collect interest on the child support that is owed and to maintain the wage withholding order against a challenge by my ex-husband.

And what has the Connecticut child support enforcement agency done lately? Amazingly, the state agency is now helping my ex-husband in his efforts to continue to delay paying his child support. Last year, my ex-husband went to them to complain about the wage withholding that occurred as a result of the private agency’s efforts.

What did the government agency do? The state encouraged him to apply for services from their agency. They then gave my ex-husband the form he needed to file with the court to stop the wage withholding. I was shocked.

I cannot understand how the same agency that was supposed to help me collect my child support, and did not do so, could now be advising my ex-husband on how to get the withholding stopped and helping him to do so. But that is exactly what they did and that is exactly what they are continuing to do today. (I have transcripts of witnesses under oath, as well as my own first hand observations, to support what I have just described.)

Since the Connecticut child support enforcement agency became involved in helping my ex-husband in March of 2000, I have stopped receiving all child support. My attorney has been to court numerous times trying to get the court to order that my child support payments be resumed through wage withholding. Now, almost a year later, I am still without child support.

The entire way in which the Connecticut child support enforcement agency has conducted itself in this case is shameful. The one time I began getting help from a private child support enforcement agency, the government interceded in that effort….not to help me, but to help my ex-husband get back into court to further delay his obligation to pay child support.

Now, Connecticut has passed legislation that prevents any private agency from helping me and others like me in Connecticut…leaving us with no support and no place to turn.

If this seems as wrong to you as it does to me, please join this coalition and GET INVOLVED.