You Can Run, but You Can't Hide
When a noncustodial parent falls behind on child support payments or simply stops paying altogether, all too frequently the custodial parent must resort to welfare to help support the family. Wanting to minimize the burden that "deadbeat dads" shift to public institutions, the federal and state governments have made substantial efforts toward reducing both the bureaucracy of child support and delinquencies in child support payments. In recent years, enforcement of court-ordered child support has received a great deal of attention. With the availability of federal welfare money as both carrot and stick, state child support agencies, including Illinois, have built comprehensive child support enforcement programs and have acted to tighten child support laws.
In Illinois, child support must be paid until a child reaches the age of 18 or becomes emancipated, and an order for child support cannot terminate any earlier. When a divorce judge decides how much child support to award, the judge must follow specific statutory guidelines. Those guidelines require at a minimum that child support be paid in an amount equal to a specific percentage of the paying parent's net income. For example, a judge must order child support for a single child to equal at least 20% of the obligated parent's net income. The judge cannot deviate from these specific amounts without a detailed explanation that also must follow the statutory guidelines. The Illinois Supreme Court recently approved a divorce judgment that exempted a noncustodial mother from paying child support to the custodial father. In that case, the mother's income was far below the father's.
When a parent fails to comply with a child support order, he or she could face several penalties, and Illinois child support laws now make those penalties easier to impose. It used to be that temporary and interim orders for child support were not considered final judgments for the purpose of enforcing them against a delinquent parent who relocates to another state. The deadbeat parent's new state of residence would refuse to honor a child support judgment because it might have been subject to modification. Now, an Illinois support order becomes a fully enforceable final judgment in the amount of each payment or installment of support on the day such amount becomes due. In addition, each overdue support payment automatically becomes a lien against the noncustodial parent's real estate and personal property in Illinois.
If a parent in Illinois falls behind in child support payments by 90 days or more, the judge can order the parent's driver's license suspended until the payments are made. As a less drastic measure, a judge may permit limited driving privileges for employment or medical purposes only.
If an Illinois judge finds that the noncustodial parent owns a business and has failed to keep separate records or maintain separate assets for the business, the judge can apply the business assets toward payment of the child support. Likewise, if the noncustodial parent transfers assets to another person to avoid child support obligations or keeps assets in someone else's name, those assets can be made subject to the child support judgment.
Of course, a delinquent parent still faces the old-fashioned penalty of a contempt order for failure to comply with an order to pay child support. The penalties for being found in contempt include probation and jail.
