A Zanesville mother is awaiting child support by July, as ordered by a judge in December, in a continuous child support battle with her ex-husband since their
divorce in 2000, as reported by the Zanesville Times Recorder.
In the last eleven years J.D. has had to move to a two-bedroom apartment – having lost her home – for her to house her three teenaged children and herself. She currently holds two jobs because her ex-husband cannot be counted on to pay support monthly.
Her ex-husband, G.B., a former Zanesville resident, owes $38,701.66 in back child support according to court records. If he doesn’t pay $1652.40 per month by July 16 he will be ordered to serve 90 days in jail.
Records show that G.B. agreed to pay but that he has asked the court for a continuance.
J.D. said, “He's got his case continued and continued and continued.”
The deputy director of child support, Vince Durant, said, “Even if the child grows up, if a parent owes child support, we will continue to collect until it is paid in full. We have issues with sometimes finding a parent who has moved out of state or maybe is in prison.
Sometimes they are self-employed, which means there is no data base reporting their income and they can be difficult to find, but we are always looking.”
In 2000, after their divorce, G.B. was ordered to pay $1853.29 per month while earning $128,000 per year. J.D. was unemployed at the time.
The court raised the child support amount to $2,197.08 per month in 2003 as J.B. was then earning $400,000 per year. That same year G.B. was found in contempt of court for failing to pay.
A jail sentence was suspended when he purged his contempt and paid.
J.D. contended, “The court lets Greg pay in these lump sums, and then for months or years at a time, we don't get anything.”
Durant explained, “They find that if they have a hearing coming up, the hearing may go better for them if they've paid. We never turn the money down.
We consider that a failure.
We won't get any money out of them if they are in jail.”
In 2003 G.B. was working as an entrepreneur and either a project manager or construction project manager, per court records.
By 2006 G.B. claimed that he had a drop in his salary and his court ordered child support was reduced to $611.94 a month. In February 2008 it was raised to $1,350 a month.
His sporadic payments came to a halt in 2009, then in 2010 he began making a few payments again, his last was on November 23 for $200.
The court found G.B. “voluntarily unemployed or voluntarily underemployed” from August 2008 through 2010 – a period of time that G.B. claimed that he was unable to gain, or engage in, employment.
The court found that since G.B. hadn’t shown any corroboration of his claim of financial distress, and that his unemployment was due to his own voluntary conduct, his defense for not paying support was invalidated.
Per Durant, another threat, other than jail time, is to revoke their driver’s license. He said, “If someone is more than a month behind on child support, we can have their license suspended.
But we don't find this action very productive and haven't done that many times. They need their license for work purposes.
If they don't have a license, they don't work and we don't get paid. Before we do this, we think long and hard.”
Other licenses can also sometimes be revoked in a last ditch effort to get child support paid: hunting, law and doctor licenses.
J.D. said that she isn’t expecting much from the court system and is relying solely on herself to provide for her children. She said, “We don't have a lot, but we're making it.”
If your children have suffered due to erratic child support, contact a family law attorney near you for help.