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Cindy Dittemore gets a kiss from her granddaughter, Micah, 7. Ms. Dittemore has had custody of her two granddaughters for a year.

Mitchell Sigrist gets $686 a month in disability payments. But $411 of that goes for child-support payments to a son who doesn’t carry his last name, is 18 years old and living on his own.

“I got him a job at the carnival. He’s traveling with the carnival right now,” said the wheelchair-bound Mr. Sigrist.

Cindy Dittemore and one daughter share legal custody of another daughter’s two small children. She struggles with the children’s fathers to pay child support. She went to child-support enforcement a few weeks ago to get one of them to pay.

“(The clerk) said, ‘As of today, they put out a warrant for his arrest,’ and I said ‘When is this going to happen?’ and she said, ‘Ma’am, it’s just been two weeks; get used to it,’” Ms. Dittemore said. “It’s been five years. I think I’ve done more than wait.”

Jerry Grippando said he still pays child support on a daughter who lives with him. And the money keeps adding up.

“They tell you to get an attorney,” Mr. Grippando said. “I can’t afford an attorney.”

Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Cindy Dittemore and her two granddaughters, Micah, 7, and Presley, 5, at their home in St. Joseph.

Dawn Futch has been disabled since she got T-boned by a tractor-trailer in Florida a few years ago. Her ex-husband was ordered to pay $350 a month on their 16-year-old son. But he’s $11,000 behind and still counting.

“I’m getting things turned off ’cause I don’t have any money,” Ms. Futch said. “My disability don’t stretch, especially on a teenager.”

Perhaps nothing, except maybe politics, religion and taxes, elicits more strong reaction than the issue of child support. Whether on the receiving or giving end, custodial or noncustodial parent, more than a few see a system they believe doesn’t work.

It’s a system some see where many noncustodial parents are put in a revolving door between incarceration and poverty. And on the other side, they see a system where some believe not enough is done to track down those “well-to-do” noncustodials who know just how to skirt the law.

But it’s a system that does work, said Dwight Scroggins, Buchanan County prosecuting attorney. His office includes the county’s child-support enforcement division.

It’s the definition of a “beautiful government program,” he said — a program where 64 percent of noncustodial parents in about 6,000 open child support cases in Buchanan County actively pay child support compared to 21 percent nationally and 22 percent overall in the state, he said.

“We collected last year $13.5 million, between 75 and 80 percent of which went directly to families not receiving any kind of assistance. So 75 to 80 percent of that went directly to support children and families,” Mr. Scroggins said.

But Bonnie Russell, founder of familylawcourt.com, an Internet family court magazine and blog based in San Diego, said she believes the child support system as it is in America is a system that’s broken. And it’s one that’s rigged against parents and children. Child support is merely a business, she said, designed to keep some people in a job.

“It’s a full employment act for attorneys, therapists, social workers, people running anger management programs, which studies show aren’t effective,” she said. “Most of them are in the business of making money.”

Kathy Welsch, coordinator of the Homeless Initiative, said she’s seen men come to the Juda House homeless shelter who have had financial problems partly due to child support. She said the problem starts with educating children about the responsibilities of parenthood.

“Today people just start families and forget to start a home,” she said. “Then the conflicts of having a baby without a home puts so much pressure on the mother and father.”

Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Andrew Krzan, 16, and his mother, Dawn Futch, have not received child support from Andrew’s father for more than eight years.

The purpose of child-support enforcement is not to put someone in jail, Mr. Scroggins said, but to benefit the children. And no one is arrested who is making a serious effort to comply with the court order.

“One of the reasons we’re so aggressive in collecting child support is because every bit of research says the No. 1 thing you can do to improve a child’s position in life is (to make it) so that they are financially contributed to by both parents,” he said.

Child support doesn’t necessarily have to be a vicious cycle of incarceration and poverty for a person who complies with the law. A person in arrears is given every opportunity to make arrangements for payment before being arrested, Mr. Scroggins said.

“The vast majority of them are put on probation, and the courts set conditions of probation based upon what the previous court has ordered them to pay, based upon what their employment is,” he said.

And after the Flood of 1993, when many people lost their jobs or had to take lesser-paying ones, Mr. Scroggins said the state court made modifications to the law that allowed a noncustodial parent to get payment adjustments without having to seek an attorney.

Another change was that the noncustodial parent no longer had to hire an attorney if he was denied visitation by the custodial parent. That changed about 10 years ago, Mr. Scroggins said, with the implementation of the family access motion. The motion works much like a small claims court, where no attorney is required for a noncustodial parent to take the custodial parent back to court for non visitation.

“You both go back in front of the judge who issued the original order,” Mr. Scroggins said. “You tell the judge your side, they tell the judge their side, and if the judge determines they have been denying you visitation rights, not only can he give you additional visitation, but he can also order them to pay the cost of filing the motion.”

But ultimately, when it comes to child support enforcement overall, a person has to distinguish between the people who are really making an effort to comply with the system and those who make an effort to skirt the system, Mr. Scroggins said.

“The ones who quit their job and move on to another one to get a job working for cash, doing all the underhanded things to avoid supporting their children — those are the only ones you’re going to see in jail,” he said.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.