Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Susan Hopkins was in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Roanoke on Thursday to declare herself broke.
Her ex-husband's failure to pay child support had brought her there, she said.
She'd struggled financially in the years after their divorce in 1984. She'd worked at a law firm, in a school administration office. But she never stopped pursuing the child support payments he'd refused to make.
Two and a half year ago, Hopkins was diagnosed with agoraphobia - fear of being in open or public places. She stopped working. She went on welfare - forced to because she could not collect the child support her ex-husband had been court-ordered to pay, she said.
But monthly welfare checks go only so far, Hopkins said. She is being evicted from the home she rents in Christiansburg. Her car has been repossessed. She has bills she cannot pay.
"I had no alternative but to file for bankruptcy," said Hopkins, 45.
The $32,000 that Hopkins' ex-husband owes for the care of their 13-year-old daughter might not completely have solved her problems. But it surely would have helped, she said.
The Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement has been tracking Hopkins' ex-husband - John Barry Hopkins - for 10 years. He has dodged authorities numerous times, moving from Mississippi to Arkansas to Mississippi to Florida to Texas - and back to Florida.
The parents of Susan Hopkins' ex-husband had refused earlier this year to tell her where he was. But in March, another of his family members slipped up and told her, she said.
Hopkins passed the information to the support enforcement division - his address in Tallahassee, his phone number and his workplace. He is a computer analyst with a Fortune 500 company, she said.
Hopkins had expected the division to swoop down and shake the money he owed out of him. She has received nothing.
Why, she asked, can't the division collect money from him?
Division administrators declined to comment on specifics of the case. Doing so would breach confidentiality, they explained.
But apparently, the division's collection procedure is not as immediate as Hopkins had hoped.
Locating a delinquent parent tells the enforcement division only where the parent should be served with a court summons or notice that wage-withholding steps are being taken, said Wayne Chapman, manager of the Roanoke district Division of Child Support Enforcement. And it tells the division, if a parent is out-of-state, which state must assist in collecting back payment.
"You're asking another child support office to obligate someone" to make payment to Virginia, Chapman said. "That can delay it. And locating someone just gives them the opportunity, if they are inclined to move, to move again. It's a difficulty we have with interstate cases."
Susan Hopkins fears that the longer it takes the support enforcement division to collect from her ex-husband, the greater the chances he'll move again.
Measures do exist at the state and federal levels to combat parents' failure to pay child support.
The federal Child Support Recovery Act gives states the authority to pursue nonpayment as a criminal action in federal courts. The 1992 law was designed to take the incentive out of moving across state lines to avoid child support payment.
Chapman said that remedy is being pursued in a number of cases pending with the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke. He did not know if Hopkins' case was among them.
State laws strengthening the enforcement of child support orders passed in the 1994 and 1995 General Assembly sessions. The most recent requires delinquent parents to pay or risk losing their professional, occupational or driver's licenses and privileges.
Those laws have generated about $140,000 in back payments since July, primarily from people who've been notified of possible suspensions, said Bob Osburn, a division spokesman.
Hopkins has been tangling with the Virginia Child Support Enforcement Division for as long as the division has tried to pin down her ex-husband. He has made a total of four payments since their divorce, she said.
The first check bounced, Hopkins said. The next three cleared but were mistakenly mailed by the enforcement division to a Susan Hopkins in the Midwest who was kind enough to mail them back, she said.
Since then, "it's been a nightmare," Hopkins said.
Nationwide, public child support agencies are so swamped with requests for help that they are able to find only a fraction of the parents who refuse to pay or acknowledge paternity.
Virginia is no exception. The state Division of Child Support Enforcement has a caseload of 372,230 parents who owe $850 million in back support payments.
A U.S. Census Bureau report on child support found that, nationwide, 50 percent of families that are owed money receive full payment. Twenty-five percent receive partial payment, and another 25 percent receive nothing at all.
Twenty-five percent of families in Virginia who are owed back child support are receiving it, Osburn said.
Child support has been rolled into the state's new welfare program, cracking down on absentee parents who leave their children to grow up in poverty.
Under Virginia's new welfare program, recipients must provide parents' names and addresses and also the schools they attended, the banks they use, the jobs they've had, their birthdates and Social Security numbers. Parents who don't cooperate with authorities in tracking down their former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends risk having benefits cut off.
Friends have helped Hopkins with rent and utility bills. But it couldn't keep her from filing for bankruptcy.
"I've lost everything," she said.
by CNB