Fail to Pay Child Support, Lose Your Law License

An interesting story from the ABA Journal (also reported here) proves once again that, in most cases, failing to pay child support is usually far more costly than just paying it in the first place.

An attorney in Kansas has had his license to practice law suspended indefinitely (meaning he’s been effectively disbarred) because he consistently failed to pay child support obligations of a little over $1,000 per month. This particular lawyer had a past record of discipline, and that didn’t exactly weigh in his favor. Still, a habitual refusal to make these payments would, in most states, be grounds for disbarment on its own. This is because all states require attorneys to demonstrate “good moral character” before they can be admitted to practice law, and conduct of “moral turpitude” can be grounds for disbarment.

This attorney, because he wanted to save about $1,000 per month, has now lost his ability to practice law – the thing he spent (at least) 3 years and thousands of dollars becoming licensed to practice. The potential future income this disbarment will cost the attorney is probably far greater than the amount of money he would have spent paying child support.

Of course, you don’t have to have a professional license at stake in order for a failure to pay child support to become extremely costly. The law views child support as one of the few financial obligations that there should be virtually no way to escape. This is because child support, as the name implies, is meant to support the children of non-custodial parents, and to ensure that each parent contributes to the child’s well-being, to the greatest extent possible. So, unless it can be shown that the non-custodial parent has virtually no income, and no additional earning potential, it will be impossible for someone to escape their child support obligations.

And the laws that allow the courts and governments to enforce this obligation give the authorities a great deal of leeway to hit the obligor where it will hurt them the most, financially. In this case, it was the obligor’s law license.

However, if you owe child support, and don’t have a professional license, such as a law license, for the state to take away, the courts still have a great deal of leverage to enforce your child support obligation, and can make your life very difficult and expensive, should you fail to meet this obligation.

For example, it’s virtually impossible to discharge child support debts in bankruptcy – which is definitely an exception to the general rule in bankruptcy that allows a person to eliminate most of their debts.

Of course, this is just the beginning. Making it difficult to legally discharge a child support obligation is a start, but the state still needs a way to actually enforce this obligation against ordinary people, who don’t have extraordinary assets that can be exploited.

With this in mind, the state has the option to garnish an employee’s wages – going directly to the employer, and deducting a percentage of their salary from their paycheck, and transferring it to the obligee (the person who is owed the money). This can make the obligor’s life very difficult, especially if they don’t make much money to begin with.

Another, perhaps slightly less burdensome, method to enforce a child support judgment is to withhold state and federal income tax refunds. The government can also put a lien on any property you own, as well.

In the end, if you have any income or assets, and have a child support obligation, the above story, and the facts I’ve just conveyed, should make it clear that the state is likely to get your child support payments out of you, one way or another.

As you might imagine, there are many, many other ways the state can get child support payments out of you. And because it’s so difficult to get out of one’s obligation to pay child support, fighting a child support judgment, unless there’s clear evidence of fraud on the part of the obligee, or a legal error on the part of the judge, is not likely to end in success, and will probably be more expensive than simply paying the obligation.

Of course, if you’re truly unable to afford a child support obligation, you can petition to have it reduced (but usually not eliminated), provided that you have evidence that it is causing you serious hardship. Courts are usually pretty reasonable when it comes to accommodating these requests.