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Child support deadbeats can’t hide
YOUNGSTOWN
Workers at the Mahoning County Child Support Enforcement Agency have a nearly unlimited variety of tools to reach out and collect child support from deadbeat parents.
One of the newer ones is the ability to intercept insurance settlements received by child-support debtors, whether such a settlement stems from a dog bite or a major accident, said Toni Tablack, CSEA fiscal administrator.
Recently, the Mahoning County CSEA intercepted a $75,000 insurance settlement that would have gone to an absent parent with two child-support cases and gave $47,000 of it to one custodial parent to whom he owed money, and $28,000 to the other, Tablack said.
All CSEA previously had been able to do in this man’s cases was intercept a few tax refunds and a small bank account, she added.
“That’s a wonderful enforcement tool,” Tablack said of insurance-settlement interception.
Tablack and her colleagues were at the second annual Child Support Awareness Day observance Wednesday at Oakhill Renaissance Place.
“We have a dedicated group of professionals that usually go unseen and are often criticized by the obligor, but they’re working in the children’s best interests,” Robert E. Bush Jr., director of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, said of CSEA staff. CSEA is part of JFS.
Among the other child-support enforcement tools are wage garnishments and attachments of Worker’s Compensation and unemployment benefits, pensions, annuities, private or government retirement benefits, disability or sick pay, gambling prize awards, civil lawsuit settlements and awards and estates of debtors who die.
Tim Komara, CSEA case manager, said he recently intercepted several state-lottery prizes, ranging up to $600.
“The state is giving us more and more tools to collect the balances,” Komara said. “It’s getting easier for us to do our job to find people and attach their wages.”
Hammers in the child support enforcement tool kit include liens on the debtor’s real estate, passport denials and terminations, suspensions of driver’s and state-issued professional licenses and even felony criminal nonsupport prosecutions.
Child-support debtors can have their driver’s licenses reinstated by appearing at CSEA offices at Oakhill on business days and paying one month’s support plus $1 and a $25 license-reinstatement fee in the Deals for Your Wheels program, which continues through Aug. 29.
Fifty schoolchildren received free backpacks filled with school supplies paid for by CSEA staff and corporate donors.
Judge Beth Smith of Mahoning County Domestic Relations Court and Judge Theresa Dellick of the county’s juvenile court were honored in a noon ceremony for their support of CSEA’s goals through court orders.