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DESPERATELY SEEKING DADDY

AFTER THE CHILD SUPPORT CRACKDOWN: TALES FROM OLD RED.
By MIKE SHROPSHIRE |

In the early Eighties, American society began taking a hard look at a particular cross section of its membership and finally said, “Enough is enough.” Thus the drunk driver became Public Enemy Number One.

Now it appears that the latter half of the decade, at least in Texas, will become open season on another type of malefactor: the growing legion of non-custodial parents who fail to pay court-ordered child support.

Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox has cited statistics revealing that 50 percent of the state’s non-custodial parents do not make child support payments at all. Of the other half, 28 percent are behind in their payments.

With his customary flourish and fanfare, Mattox has mobilized his office for a highly publicized crackdown on the person delinquent on his (and in some cases, her) child support payments. And when a repeat offender’s name pops up on the attorney general’s computer, the delinquent parent will discover that compared to Jim Mattox, the IRS is a philanthropic institution. As always, many will be found in contempt of court and given jail sentences, but the AG has some new weapons designed to hurt both pride and pocket-book. Parents falling even a month behind may have their wages garnished. The most significant offenders will be featured in a special “Hall of Shame” list in daily newspapers. In San Antonio, newspapers and TV stations ran not only the names but the pictures of the delinquent dads.

The Mattox campaign against the parent who financially abandons his or her children will naturally have significant impact in Dallas, where it sometimes seems that divorce has joined death and taxes on the list of life’s inevitable woes. The crackdown has drawn applause from those who, like the attorney general, view missed payments as a form of economic child abuse. Others, especially fathers who fall behind for what they see as legitimate reasons, wonder about the wisdom of the new policy. As these vignettes from custody courts at the Old Red Courthouse reveal, the problems arising from the crackdown are widespread and complex.



THE HISTORICAL preservationists like to refer to it as “Old Red,” the Kremlinesque structure with granite turrets on Houston Street.

Other than John Neely Bryan’s feeble log cabin on the rear lawn of the Records Building next door, Old Red is the most conspicuous link to anything resembling Dallas’ heritage in the downtown business district.

But “Ministry of Despair” might be a more appropriate name. There aren’t many people who venture into Old Red on any sort of official business who don’t feel somehow lessened and, usually, devastated in terms of human worth by the time they have left.

Old Red is home to Dallas County’s family courts, although there is very little “family” activity taking place here that would remind anybody of Ozzie and Harriet.

The legal processes that formally destroy the family unit are perpetuated within the walls of Old Red.

Divorces. Child custody disputes.

Stroll the corridors outside the criminal courtrooms on the sixth floor of the County Courthouse across Commerce Street and you’ll find hostility and tightly protruding veins in the neck region.

It’s worse in the hallways that lead to the family courts in Old Red, where the prevailing atmosphere is one of abject forlornness and total defeat. But never more so than on Mondays, when the dockets are crowded with the child support contempt hearings.

Persons involved in these contempt hearings share a common purpose. Their marriages were a flop and their divorces haven’t worked either, so they’re back in court. As the hostile couples stream before the judge, the phrase “contempt of court” on the citation doesn’t begin to suggest the contempt that they now feel for each other. An outsider would be confounded to explain what made these people think they were so compatible when they marched down the aisle and into married life, only to stand by helplessly as the love gradually filtered out of their love-hate relationships.

On a Monday in mid-September, Judge Don Koons will hear nine child support contempt cases. Judge Dee Miller has 14 listed, Judge Theo Bedard must deal with 17 such disputes and Judge Bob O’Donnell has 23 on his list. Koons, Miller and Bedard work their way through these unhappy proceedings in an atmosphere that seems generally hushed and muted. O’Donnell, however, tends to conduct himself like an auctioneer at a quarter horse sale. He’s prone to growl and bark at the various attorneys and, in the finest traditions of the junkyard dog, occasionally sink his teeth into one of the litigants.

The docket call begins promptly at 9:30 a.m. The bailiff instructs everyone to rise as O’Donnell enters the courtroom. The judge situates himself behind the bench, lights a cigarette and says, “Let’s get on with it.”

The ex-husbands and ex-wives, whether inside the courtroom or stationed outside on the benches, seem almost paralyzed with anxiety. Meanwhile, the attorneys pace the premises, heads bowed and seemingly deep in thought, like funeral directors who have been informed at mid-service that the fuel pump has gone out on the hearse.

O’Donnell quickly disposes of four cases. The most significant arrearage is three months and nobody is sent to jail. The conventional verdict is an order to pay up in 10 to 30 days. The ex-husbands and wives and their legal representatives move out quickly, teeth clenched. Everyone seems anxious to leave.

The next man on the stand is an aging caricature of Jerry Lee Lewis, resplendent in an amazing, form-fitting satin shirt adorned with prints of mountain nymphs concealing their bare breasts beneath their hands. He is accompanied by his current Sweet Thing, who appears dismally apprehensive. There is a lull in the action and O’Donnell calls a five-minute recess.

“Good. That gives me time to go outside for another cigarette,” sighs the defendant.

“That won’t do you much good,” says Sweet Thing.

Five minutes pass and their case is called. The ex-wife of the man in the spectacular shirt is there with a lawyer in his late 20s. Naturally, the defendant is without counsel. The combatants position themselves in front of the microphones arranged before the bench.

The ex-wive’s attorney begins cross-examining his client, a blonde lady who, despite her broken nose, is infinitely more attractive than her ex. The questions are routine, delivered in a monotonous litany.

“Were you married to such and such? Were you divorced on such and such a date?” And so forth.

The sequence of yes and no answers reveals that the couple had two children when they divorced in 1972 and that the husband was ordered to pay a total of $30 a week in child support.

“Since that time,” the lawyer asks the exwife, “have you received a dime?”

“No.”

The lawyer presses on.

“Did you receive any money at all in 1973?”

“No.”

“1974?”

“No.”

“1975?”

“No.”

“1976?”

“No.”

“1977, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 or 85?”

“No.”

Now the defendant is given his chance to explain.

“After we divorced, she said she didn’t want my money,” he begins in a voice already beginning to falter. “She said she did not want to see me and did not want me to see the boys.”

Then he begins to speak more rapidly. “She can’t say that I didn’t buy clothes for the boys and that I didn’t bring them groceries.”

Under questioning from the woman’s lawyer, however, he admits that he has never filed a check through the county child support office and that he has no receipts to indicate he’d even supplied a candy bar to the two boys. The defendant explained that he was a carpenter, that work was seasonal and his income was erratic.

“Is it your testimony that you, at any point in the last 13 years, couldn’t afford to meet a single weekly payment?” the lawyer wants to know.

At this point, the defendant senses that storm clouds are gathering. He suddenly transforms himself into his own court-appointed attorney. “Your honor,” he begs. “Can we set this thing off for a while? Can I come back with a lawyer and bring my boys to testify on my behalf?”

“No.”

O’Donnell doesn’t take long to render his verdict: judgment to ex-wife to the tune of $10,170, plus $500 for her attorney’s fees, plus court costs, plus six months in the county jail. But the judge gives the defendant two and a half weeks to raise the money or else, as O’Donnell puts it, “start pulling down the time.”

Ex-husband and ex-wife march out of the courtroom, seemingly in shock. The attorney follows, giggling to himself at some terribly amusing joke known only to himself. The procession of misery continues through O’Donnell’s courtroom. One middle-aged woman, clad in corduroy jeans and sandals, waits in vain for her delinquent ex-husband to show up and face the music. Her attorney is distraught, seeing his entire morning being wasted. The ex-husband’s counsel, a young guy in a $59 suit, is a forlorn figure, sitting outside on the bench and glancing at his watch. The ex-wife’s attorney confronts the ex-husband’s attorney: “Have you heard from him yet?”

“Nope.”

“Goddamn.”

Happiness is not abundant on the fourth floor at Old Red.



WHEN GARY ANDERSON received a certificate that officially sanctioned his licensing as an architect in the state of Texas, he experienced an ethereal state of rapture that lasted for several days.

Anderson realized that the only restrictions that might somehow, someday exclude him from what he regarded as the Penthouse of Life would have to be self-imposed. And since everyone had been assuring Anderson that his design talents were limitless, he naturally never assumed that he could end up in jail.

No, one of Gary’s buildings didn’t come cascading down upon a stainless steel mall, wiping out a half-generation of America’s most promising young consumers. And, no, Gary didn’t mastermind any outrageous conspiracy to boondoggle a fortune out of some governmental entity.

Gary’s situation, like most of the rest of them, was fairly complex. The products of an ill-fated teenage marriage-an ex-wife and an ex-kid he thought he’d never see again-had come back to haunt him.

Fourteen years before, Gary had agreed to pay Sheila $100 a month for his son’s upkeep after their divorce. Two months later, she’d taken the child and moved to California. The last he’d heard, Sheila was married to a Toyota dealer in Encino.

Subsequently, Gary remarried and re-divorced. The failure of the second marriage to Lisa, who was quite a showpiece, had traumatized Gary to the extent that he had let his on-again, off-again drinking problems get out of hand. This, accompanied by the distractions and pressures ignited by the divorce from Lisa, triggered a chain reaction of on-the-job problems that had cost Gary’s boss two major contracts. Accordingly, this cost Gary his job. He was living in the Routh Street studio of a former colleague and hand-to-mouthing it on the limited proceeds of a residential design project for a former client when the summons arrived.

Contempt of Court, it said. What that meant was that Sheila had gotten divorced in California, had returned to Texas and was demanding the accumulated arrearages of what Gary had failed to pay her all these years. By now, that amounted to almost $15,000.

Gary showed up for his contempt hearing but, like most child support offenders, he had stupidly failed to consult legal counsel before going down to Old Red, and he compounded the problem by showing up half drunk; Sheila’s attorney chopped him into cat food. Gary not only didn’t have anything resembling a decent defense for his nonpayment, but he smart-mouthed the lawyer and the judge. And then he learned his vital lesson. “There’s nothing like the words ’I therefore sentence you to…’ to get your stomach churning,” he would later say.

Anderson was processed through The Lew Sterrett Justice Center, along with dope dealers, pimps and rapists, and transported to the minimum security Woodlawn facility at Maple and Oak Lawn that houses all child support offenders who are sentenced to jail in Dallas County.

Gary managed to obtain trustee status that allowed him to qualify for midnight-to-dawn floor buffing duties at Sterrett. “I’ve got 11 days credit for good time in case I ever have to go in there again,” he says with a measure of pride.

Anderson would eventually secure his release from a 60-day sentence 15 days early. He has paid Sheila $7,500 worth of the arrearages on a loan from the unlikeliest of sources-her father, whom Gary hadn’t seen or spoken to for 15 years. The father agreed to the loan with the stipulation that Gary would embark on a meaningful relationship with his son. The final irony is that Gary now has legal custody of the boy, a 10th grader at Highland Park High School.



DALLAS COUNTY deputy sheriff Preston Snoga is a celebrated figure in courthouse annals. Snoga, 47, is a bailiff assigned to Judge Theo Bedard’s 330th District Court. His powers of persuasion are the toast of Old Red. Some claim that Snoga is the greatest fundraiser since the Reverend Billy Graham. There is a theatrical presence at work here, and Snoga does in fact bear something of a resemblance to Robert Preston of The Music Man fame.

Several times a week, Snoga is involved in a scenario that goes something like this: Wally Wayward, several months to several years behind in child support, has been dragged into court. Wally does his best to explain to the judge all about how hard times had come a-knockin’. Wally tells the judge about how, despite all his good intentions, he’s been blindsided and kicked senseless by a woman in a black dress. Her name is Fate.

The judge listens sympathetically and proposes that 60 days in the county jail will give Wally time to mull over his problems and perhaps sort out some solutions. Unless, of course, he can somehow scrape up the three grand or whatever sum that’s necessary to satisfy his child support obligation. Wally is then led into a side room where he waits for bailiff Preston Snoga to come and escort him into the therapeutic halls of incarceration. Snoga finally arrives, begins shuffling papers and feigning polite chit-chat.

Without exception, Snoga’s conversational entrée is, “You ever been in jail before?” Whether the answer is yes or no, Snoga will respond, “I worked as jailer over there for no telling how many years.” Then he builds to the punch line. “You know, they tell me it’s getting pretty rough over there now. I imagine there are some pretty big guys over there who are gonna think you’re kinda cute.” At this point, Snoga will glance out of the corner of his eye at Wally’s Adam’s apple, by now swollen to the size of a ripe peach.

Then Snoga closes the sale. “Can’t you think of somebody you can call who can help you come up with the money? Look. There’s a phone there that I’ll let you use for free.”

There are those around the courthouse who contend that Preston’s pitch has raised more money for hungry kids than a year’s worth of Live Aid concerts. Snoga, however, remains rather modest about it. “You’ll be surprised how the money starts falling out of their pockets when the steel door is about to slam shut,” he says. “I’ve seen ’em call their boss or their grandaddy, their best pal, their current wife. Their minister, sometimes. Usually, the judge will allow those guys to furlough themselves around until they’ve secured the cash,” Snoga says, adding that the process usually won’t last more than three hours. Snoga doesn’t regard the delinquent child support offender with high esteem. Nor does he feel any particular sense of pity. He does, however, think that his tactics might be helpful to a kid trapped in the crossfire of a bitter divorce.

“These guys who don’t pay, usually it’s a revenge thing. They’re still mad at their ex-wives,” he says. Snoga then cites the recent case of the child support defendant who came before Judge Bedard in an outfit that suggested that the man was fresh off the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.

“He had on Calvin Klein designer jeans, a chamois vest, an Italian straw hat with pink feather stuck in the band, a pair of $400 ostrich boots and was wearing one of those seven-pound Rolex watches with diamonds around the dial. Then the guy stood there in front of God and the State and swore to the judge that he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from or what bed he’d lie in that night. And the judge decided to help him out for the next couple of months. The next meal might not be all that tasty and the bed might be a little hard, but at least he’d have a roof over his head, you know?”

After the man had been led into the little room, he looked at Snoga and said, referring to Judge Bedard, “That’s one cold-blooded woman.” Snoga looked at him and said, “That judge is one of the most gracious, kind-hearted people you’ll ever meet.” Then he let him use the phone. “Within about 20 minutes, his live-in girlfriend was there with the cash. Driving a Mercedes.”

Snoga says he went to work in Theo Bed-ard’s courtroom in 1979, after the emotional stress of working the fourth floor at Old Red had caused the previous bailiff to quit. He admits that sometimes, looking at the faces on those benches outside the courtroom, he feels a sadness that penetrates to the bone.

“They look like lambs led to the slaughter,” Snoga says. “Divorce can be a very emotional thing. Worse than death. Very traumatic. When someone you value dies, they’re gone. When you’re divorced from someone you care about, they’re still around somewhere, to haunt you every day.”

Snoga presents what he feels is one of the profound truths he’s stumbled across during six years in Old Red. “You know what causes divorce?” he asks. Snoga waits about nine seconds, then provides the answer.

“Marriage.”

One of Snoga’s most ardent fans is Dallas attorney Joe Collins, who says that the bailiff’s tactics have yielded more results for Collins’ “clients” than any conventional judicial proceeding ever could.

Collins, a partner at Malouf, Lynch and Jackson, candidly admits that he’d rather do another hitch in Vietnam than deal with child support contempt renderings. “In a lot of these cases, the delinquent father can BS himself into some kind of settlement that the mother will go for out of some kind of sense of regret or guilt, and what she winds up with is part of her money and still more headaches with the guy.” Collins says.

Collins also points out that the terrifying concept of the jail term is mitigated by what is known as work release, which enables the inmate to leave Woodlawn to go to the job: “If the guy, or, in some cases the woman, has a regular job, then getting a work release is usually not a problem.”

Recently, Collins heard that a major magazine was planning an article on the concept of the “friendly divorce,” a phenomenon the article will suggest is currently stylish in the more cosmopolitan and enlightened echelons of society.

“Well, if that article is factual, it ought to be about four sentences long,” Collins says. “I saw what might amount to some friendly divorces when I was in law school at SMU in the Sixties and working in the legal clinic. Some of the old hippies were capable of shaking hands and saying ’so long and good luck.’ But when the hippies died out, the idea of the friendly divorce died out with them.”

No one is more fundamentally and acutely aware of that than Judge Theo Bedard, a sensitive individual who is called upon to register rulings and verdicts that are trying and generally heartbreaking to all parties involved. In the matter of child support disputes, she contends, it is customarily a matter that involves two people who, despite what any documents in the County Records Building might say, are unable to become “psychologically divorced.”

She agrees that there is a syndrome involved wherein a person will terminate a marriage and, because of distractions and anxiety, begin to falter in areas of job performance, which, in turn, eventually leads to the bricks. No job. No funds. No child support payments.

“A large percentage of these people never realize that if they can demonstrate a significant alteration of income, they can have their child support payments lowered and then avoid the contempt proceedings,” says Dallas attorney Karen Greer.

Judge Bedard says that one of the most chaotic times in her court came in the aftermath of Black Wednesday, when Braniff folded. The undertow of that bankruptcy created some heavy traffic in her courtroom. A basic sense not of compassion, but reasonableness on the part of Judge Bedard has kept a legion of delinquent dads out of jail. But the person who has the capacity to make the payments and refuses to do it is likely to take the jailhouse fall. And why do they fail to pay?

“In most cases, it becomes an emotional thing with the second spouse of whomever is supposed to be paying the support. They will not allow them to pay it.”

Bedard is also in total philosophical accord with her trusted bailiff, Preston Snoga. “I keep in mind that the people who come into my court have what anybody can see is a case of the divorce crazies,” Bedard says. “There’s been a death. The death of a relationship. People grieve.” The judge tacitly sanctions Snoga’s persuasive routine after she has handed down a jail sentence. “I have no objection if the bailiff would like one of these people to use the phone after they’ve been sentenced,” she says. “If a mother or father or current wife or girlfriend- whoever-can help somebody come up with some money, then I have no objection.”



STEVE THOMAS, manager of the Dallas County Enforcement Office, is in charge of collections for the 59,000 child support accounts that are processed through his office. According to his projections, that figure will surpass 65,000 by the end of 1985 and grow to 83,000 by the end of the following year. “The number of persons obligated to pay child support in Dallas County had been increasing at a rate of 5,000 a year,” Thomas says. “But in 1984, the number jumped to 7,000.”

Thomas says that since the Mattox campaign was launched and because of the attendant publicity that was generated, walk-in traffic at his office involving persons seeking service or information has increased from about five to 40 persons a day.

Even though the Mattox crackdown has substantially accelerated the work load at Thomas’ office, he says that he is all for it. “Thanks to the Attorney General’s campaign, the person who fails to meet child support obligations is being viewed as someone who is socially unacceptable. And that’s the way that it should be,” Thomas says. However, he does not necessarily endorse the concept of instantaneous incarceration for the delinquent parties that his enforcement people round up.

“Mattox puts a lot of faith in putting people in jail,” Thomas says. “We try to negotiate first and litigate second. Litigation is expensive.”

In Dallas County, Family Court judges are prone to agree with the argument that a person will be hard pressed to meet child support obligations while behind bars.

“However,” Thomas says, punching out some figures on an adding machine, “the judges have determined that the arrearages of 110 people in Dallas were heinous enough for them to spend some time in jail so far in the 1985 fiscal year,” Thomas says.

“Actually, there are two ways to go to jail,” Thomas says. “One is to be sentenced by a judge who finds you in contempt. But the surest way is to simply not show up for your hearing. When that happens, an arrest warrant is immediately issued and as soon as we can lay our hands on that person, they stay in jail until such time as the judge hears their case.”

According to Thomas, child support offenders aren’t clustered in any particular social category. “You can pretty well profile the chronic DWI offender,” he says. “But you can’t do that with child support offenders. They present themselves in all forms, racially and economically.”



NO ONE DENIES that the child support crackdown has been effective. Child support collections in Texas have tripled this year. One state-wide family organization has given Mattox a plaque for his leadership in this area. There are some, however, who view the attorney general’s campaign with something of a jaundiced eye. Not surprisingly, these include a good number of noncustodial parents.

“This business makes me nervous as hell,” says a man we’ll call Larry.

Here’s why Larry is nervous. Larry is an electrical engineer at Mostek and knocks down an annual salary of $62,000. When he was divorced three years ago, Larry volunteered to pay his former wife $2,000 a month in child support, somewhat more than half of his take-home pay. That figure is higher than the payment guidelines set down by the family court judges in determining fair child support. “But I volunteered those payments out of a sense of love for the kids and ultimately, I suppose, a sense of guilt,” Larry says. “I screwed around a little bit and that had a lot to do with the divorce.”

Now, with big layoffs happening almost monthly at Mostek, Larry is fearful that he may soon be out of a job and on the attorney general’s hit list.

“What Larry needs to do right now is hire a lawyer, go to court and file a motion to get those payments modified,” says a Dallas attorney. “But since Larry hasn’t been laid off yet, there’s a pretty good chance his modification motion might be denied. After he gets fired, he can go back down there. But if he doesn’t file the motion and if he does get laid off, he stands a good chance of working behind the counter at Burger King while Jim Mattox takes his paycheck and sends him to jail.”

Mack Short is a concert promoter who lives in Fort Worth. In his line of business, income fluctuates. So he’s not too thrilled over the attorney general’s campaign to identify the delinquent father as Public Enemy Number One.

“After I’d been divorced a couple of years, one of the boys got tired of his mother’s act and moved in with me,” Short says. After another year, the other boy followed. “I was delighted, but I never got around to going through the motions of getting legal custody because it’s expensive and I got tired of the sound of her whiney voice on the other end of the telephone line.

“I quit paying her off when the kids came with me and was sort of amused by the irony of the fact that she never offered to pay me a nickel after I took over the kids while she worked out her.. .uh… personal problems. Now guess what came in the mail the other day? A contempt citation. She wants nine grand in arrearages, I found out. She can prove I owe it because I haven’t been sending those checks to the county child support office. And I can’t prove a goddamn thing.”

A copy editor at The Dallas Morning News vows he won’t fall into the attorney general’s clutches. “I’m actually ahead on my payments and I intend to stay that way,” he says. “The tab is $500 a month, which enables me to drive a 1979 Malibu Classic and live in a fairly decent one-bedroom apartment. I’m not complaining. But when my ex and her boyfriend take their occasional excursion to Aspen or Vegas, I sometimes wonder if my $500 a month is totally devoted to buying the shoes little Angela needs for ballet class or the green ruler that Justin will need when he starts second grade.”

(The copy editor at the News adds that the thing that grates on him the most is the fact that his ex’s boyfriend is a reporter at the Dallas rimes Herald.)

Texas Fathers for Equal Rights, based in Dallas, is dedicated to bringing about a more equitable situation involving custody and visitation rights for ex-parents. Calls to the organization are greeted by a recording that says they’ll call you back.

Recently, one of the board members monitored the calls and heard the following message: “Oh. An answering machine. Well, I’m living out of the back of my car right now, so you won’t be able to contact me. Wish me luck.”

Child support is clearly a factor in thisman’s troubled life. It’s just too bad thatHank Williams Sr. isn’t alive to write a songabout it.

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