Child Support Enforcement Motion

Where do the child support enforcement rules come from?

The rules for child support enforcement are specifically created by the United States Supreme Court and come directly from a child support enforcement appeal referred to as  Turner v. Rogers, 131 S. Ct. 2507 (Supreme Court 2011) . In that appeal, the Court set out rules that trial courts must follow in certain child support enforcement cases.

Therefore your state also has a set of rules they codified for enforcing a child support order that absolutely must comply with the rules defined by the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court.

Normally, we only provide the case citations to our Gold Members, or to our consulting customers, but we are exceptionally dedicated to this particular issue and want to provide everything we can to help you. You can of course read the case and try to go it on your own but the answers you need from Turner aren’t necessarily obvious.

If you really cannot pay, we have a sample motion that can help you enforce these rules against your judge. This is the lowest cost motion we have, its price doesn’t even recover the costs of us creating the motion. (The current child support model is an illegal scam. We will gladly help you fight it even if you can pay your child support, provided you are fit and want to directly care for your child, you can avail yourself of our free services, become a member, or engage us for additional services. We are NOT attorneys and will only directly help people who fill out our contact form and click on the notice indicating you acknowledge that we are NOT attorneys, contact form.)

We intentionally subsidize this motion because of the exceptionally vile nature of child support and child support enforcement. We especially despise the way in which fathers are branded as deadbeat dads by the same evil people who stole their child from them and turned them into just a checkbook. We call this evil because it is pure evil.

Your judge claims you have a duty to pay someone else to raise your child and points to state law for this obscene assertion. Meanwhile, your judge has a federal constitutional duty “to proceed in such manner that all the substantial rights of the parties under controlling federal law are protected.” The United States Constitution demands that your judge protect your rights.

Your judge swore an oath to uphold the federal constitution, “any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Your judge is violating his own even higher duty and violating his own sworn oath when he claims authority to imprison you for not wanting to pay someone else to raise your child when you are perfectly capable and willing to do so yourself.

Your judge can run his mouth all day long about how horrible he thinks you are but never forget, your judge is a liar who is actively violating his own sacred oath and violating federal law to imprison you for his own personal financial gain. Your judge has NO honor and your judge knows it as he is belittling you. Truth is a powerful thing and truth is on your side.

Just remember, your judge is demonizing you and trying to brand you as a sub-human individual deserving of derision and scorn for his own personal financial gain, NOT because he has any legitimate authority moral, legal, or otherwise to do so. This is a common tactic of evil people seeking personal gain. Recognize it as such and don’t let these evil people make you feel bad in any way.

What is this horrible sin you are accused of by your biased judge? You dared to be “less than the best” parent of your child in this unfaithful liar’s personal viewpoint while you are fully willing and able to directly care for your child directly to the same standards as other parents are held. Based upon nothing more than this official’s sole viewpoint, one parent is able to be the beneficiary of a wide range of government benefits for poor parents and the other parent is denied even the most basic of assistance and is instead demonized for being poor. You need to fight this evil.

Depriving a child of a fit willing father based on a sole government official’s own personal viewpoint regarding which of two parents is the better parent is evil and immoral. Jailing a fit willing parent for being unable to pay someone else to raise their own child is evil and immoral.

Title IV-D pays states more than four billion dollars every year to deprive fit willing parents of their children, to then order them to pay excessive amounts of support to someone else, and then to enforce this absurdity with zero regard for constitutional limitations on state power.

How does your judge directly financially gain from this corrupt child custody and child support scheme?

If the most basic rights of parents are denied by the judiciary, the judiciary creates contested child custody suits that would NOT otherwise exist. These unnecessary suits by desperate parents seeking only to protect their intimate and expressive associations with their children are the only reason why a significant number of state judges have jobs. This is a direct pecuniary gain for your judge who would likely lose his job if he actually did his job properly.

When the government can deprive you of the most important thing in your life based upon nothing more than a sole government official’s biased viewpoint, loving parents are forced to battle with each other when they otherwise would not if their basic parental rights were protected, your judge gets to have a prestigious job with a healthy salary and significant state benefits that otherwise would NOT exist.

The State’s best interests of the child public policy is NOT designed to help children, it is designed to force fit loving parents into brutal battles against one another where the only way to protect access to one’s child is to viciously attack the child’s other parent. Your judge sits on high like Cesar giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down based upon nothing other than his own personal viewpoint or perhaps the cries of the crowds.

Violating your child’s fundamental right to have a father in their lives is legally considered irreparable injury to the child. Claiming that irreparably injuring your child is in your child’s best interest is just plain evil. Where the State’s best interests of the child public policy grants judges authority to violate the child’s constitutional rights without any protections, the policy directly injures the child which can never be in the child’s best interests. Your State is directly injuring your child.

The reach of this evil bias against fit parents is profound. While the Supreme Court usually ends up making the right constitutional decisions in family law cases, they always use biased language that clearly signals their agreement with the unconstitutional actions of the trial courts and their willingness to look the other way unless forced to make a specific decision.

Some justices demonstrate their profound personal bias against the fathers, whose children they have stolen from them, by openly using derogatory language and making blatantly prejudicial and shameful statements in Supreme Court opinions. When you read Turner, make sure you read Justice Thomas’ short dissent where he manages to use the term “deadbeat” or “deadbeat dad” no less than 5 times. Imagine how angry he would be if a court used a commonly used derogatory term when discussing him in its opinion.

This kind of open hatred towards a persecuted class of person angers us and we want to defeat this hatred. Read Turner v. Rogers, the majority gets it right and helps you, then get our Motion in Defense of Enforcement read our motion, then read Turner again. This should give you a good idea of how to protect yourself. If you still need help, we have consulting options.

What does Turner say about your right to have an attorney?

The Court applies a type of balancing test essentially holding that if you are facing only the other parent who doesn’t have an attorney, then no you are not entitled to an attorney being appointed. However, the court makes it clear, without actually making a holding, that in other cases where the other side has an attorney or is the state with the State’s power, their opinion would likely be very different.

Be careful of putting all your faith in having an attorney. It is unlikely that a family law attorney would actually use the Turner opinion to help you. There is much more in it than just having an attorney appointed but your family law attorney will likely ignore those things. They don’t often fight for you the way they should.

Why is it a lie to say that the case is only a civil dispute between private parties?

The State lies about the underlying conflict in child support enforcement suits, in child support suits, and in child custody suits. The State claims these are private disputes between private parties where the State is NOT a party but this simply is NOT true.

The State’s best interest of the child policy creates a federal constitutional conflict between the state and your constitutional interests. It also creates a federal constitutional conflict between the state and your child. The sneaky part is how the State tries to hide this fact. Normally, the State provides a state official to appear in court and make the State’s case. In family law, the State takes an unlawful path instead.

Instead of designating an executive official to regulate the State’s policies, to enforce the State’s policies, and to present the State’s case before a neutral and independent judicial decision-maker, the State simply buys off the judge and the judge knowingly and willingly enters into an open conspiracy with the State to be the State’s biased agent acting to vindicate the State’s policy interests. By entering into this open conspiracy your judge deprives himself of constitutionally mandated neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

The State is absolutely represented in your child support enforcement suit by your judge who openly acknowledges that he is the State’s agent actively pursuing the State’s best interest policies against your constitutional interests. What your judge fails to acknowledge is that this open conspiracy deprives him of jurisdiction to be a judge.

This defense against child support enforcement motion is specifically focused on the Supreme Court’s holdings in the Turner opinion. There are additional jurisdictional arguments that can expose your judge’s unlawful actions. We are actively working on making these jurisdictional arguments before state courts and are looking for opportunity to raise them in the federal courts.

While the jurisdictional arguments are ultimately much more powerful than the Turner arguments, they are NOT as easy to argue properly. If you have an attorney who is willing to make these arguments we will happily work with that attorney to help them present the arguments properly. The motion we discuss today is designed to be usable by pro se litigants and pro se parents.

What is ability to pay in a child support enforcement hearing?

Very simply, if you do NOT have the ability to comply with the precise terms of the order, the court cannot legally punish you. However, before the court can punish you it has to determine that you have the ability to comply with the terms of the order and are unwilling to. The key here is that child support enforcement is literally a contempt proceeding that must follow the same rules as any other contempt proceeding.

The well-established rule in contempt proceedings is that there must be a valid order that you had notice of, that you had the ability to comply with, and with which you willfully failed to comply. These rules apply even in child support enforcement proceedings which are nothing more than a specific type of contempt proceeding that must comply with all the rules of contempt proceedings.

Ironically, your judge is punishing you for allegedly violating his orders by violating the orders of the United States Constitution which your judge voluntarily swore to abide by. Which of you really deserves to be in jail?

Why are you so precise in saying ability to pay “the amount ordered”?

Willfully failing to comply with the “terms of the order” is the only thing your judge can legally punish you for in a contempt hearing. You were ordered to pay an amount certain on a date certain and you failed to pay the amount certain on the date certain, this is the charge against you, nothing more and nothing less.

Many times, judges will get unprofessionally emotionally involved in child support enforcement and ask if you have any money at all. If you answer that you have $15.00 in your pocket they will respond with some emotional absurdity such as “well, why didn’t you pay $15.00 towards the child support, clearly you are able to pay something but just don’t want to.”

What is the lesson here? If you see a dollar in the parking lot on the way to your enforcement hearing, you probably shouldn’t pick it up.

You were ordered to pay an amount certain on a date certain. If you couldn’t pay the full amount owed, then you did NOT have the ability to pay. It is that black and white because it is a contempt hearing and those are the rules of contempt. The Supreme Court stated it this way, “A court may not impose punishment in a civil contempt proceeding when it is clearly established that the alleged contemnor is unable to comply with the terms of the order.”

The key phrase is “comply with the terms of the order.” The Court did NOT say pay any amount you can or pay the dollar you found in the parking lot. The Court said “comply with the terms of the order.” That is meaningful because that is the precise charge against you.

If your judge attempts to pull this crap on you, object by saying that the court is exceeding its authority under the specific charges being raised against you. Ask the court read into the record the precise terms of the charges against you in these proceedings. This establishes a baseline for the court’s authority to act against you in these particular proceedings.

Common tools of family court corruption: Family courts apply a host of unlawful procedures against parents in family law proceedings. One of the ways they violate your procedural rights is to combine multiple actions into a small number of proceedings. Most commonly they unlawfully combine the adjudicatory hearing necessary to establish their authority to act with the dispositional hearing where appropriate relief is determined.

More often than not, your court simply fails to perform the adjudicatory hearing to establish their authority to act against you by simply presuming the authority and providing you no opportunity to challenge their authority.

What is absolutely certain in every single family law suit we have ever seen is that the Court completely fails to perform the required federal constitutional rights adjudication of the conflict between your constitutional interests and the State’s best interests of the child interests. They fail to perform this adjudication because there is no possible way the State could prevail in that adjudication.

This is one of the ways that we demonstrate that the state court’s orders are unconstitutional in our other tools and in our consulting work where we help parents deprive judges of their commonly used unconstitutional tools.

Is the date certain important?

The date certain is as relevant as the amount certain. The question before the court cannot be how much money you have in your pocket on the day of the hearing, if for no other reason than because you haven’t been properly noticed that the court will punish you based on how much you have in your pocket at that time. Failure to provide notice deprives the court of jurisdiction to act against you.

While there are many ways the court might punish you, it cannot punish you without notice for anything you do not do in your judge’s presence. Notice is a jurisdictional requirement on the court.

When it comes to contempt proceedings, the rules are very precise and very important. The proceeding is considered quasi-criminal even when called civil. This means that the rules are supposed to be strictly followed.

Is the child support enforcement proceeding a civil or a criminal proceeding?

Generally, there are two types of contempt, civil contempt and criminal contempt. The key difference is that criminal contempt is punishment and civil contempt is not. It is commonly said of civil contempt that the incarcerated individual has the keys to his own jail cell in the form of simply complying with the order. In criminal contempt, you serve your sentence no matter what you do.

How do I know if my enforcement proceeding is civil or criminal?

This is a question you need to ask up front at the very beginning of the proceeding if it is NOT clear in the notice you receive. If the notice provided you was not clear, you should object to the improper notice as a jurisdictional matter. Without proper jurisdiction your judge can do nothing.

The way you ask is to ask the judge if jail is a potential outcome of the hearing. If he says yes, then you ask if jail as a punitive measure is an option that the judge will consider. If he says yes, a punitive jail sentence is an option the court is considering, and you don’t have an appointed attorney then you need to immediately object on Sixth Amendment grounds and insist on having an attorney appointed to you.

The Sixth Amendment applies in criminal proceedings and is potentially jurisdictional in nature. This means that if you are subject to a criminal penalty, are indigent, and you request an attorney then the State must provide you with an attorney. If they do not then most likely any penalty they give you is void.

The difference between civil incarceration and criminal incarceration is that with civil incarceration you will be released if you agree to comply with the order. In criminal incarceration, your incarceration is set to a date certain whether or not you comply with the order. Civil contempt is coercion to take some action while criminal contempt is just punishment.

Are you entitled to have an attorney appointed in your civil child support enforcement case?

If the other side has an attorney, you may be entitled to an attorney. If the State is prosecuting you through the Attorney General’s Office or the child support agency or assisting the other parent then you are likely entitled to an attorney.

The Supreme Court has set the rules in certain civil cases and has told us how they would likely rule in other cases. The Court’s criteria seems to be based on fundamental fairness and the Court clearly holds that “the State must nonetheless have in place alternative procedures that assure a fundamentally fair determination of the critical incarceration-related question, whether the supporting parent is able to comply with the support order.”

In short, the State may NOT incarcerate you by using processes that are fundamentally unfair. If you are not clear on what needs to be done to stay out of jail, then the process is NOT fair. If you are NOT provided with written alternative procedures that guarantee a fundamentally fair process, then the judge cannot legally put you in jail. You need to object to any lack of written and properly served alternative procedures.

Properly served means that you received the written notice at least ten days prior to the hearing. It is NOT acceptable for the court to provide notice on the day of your hearing or in a time period that prevents you from developing a real defense to the charges under the procedures provided.

What is the standard for ability to pay?

This an excellent question and one that we have never seen answered by any court or by any state statute. This is a vital concern for you to object as a matter of fundamental unfairness. If you are NOT served with a written standard of what is and is not considered an ability to pay, then how do you prove you are unable to pay?

If you are presented with an impossible burden then you are being subjected to unfair procedures. Without a written standard to inform your evidence and arguments, you are arguing under an unconstitutionally vague standard or simply arguing in the dark on a hope and a prayer.

If you are NOT provided with a written standard of what constitutes an inability to pay then you need to object to a fundamentally unfair standard that is unconstitutionally vague because it is unfair for you to be required to meet a standard that only exists in the judge’s mind and may only be solidified by the judge after you have presented all your evidence. Because there is no standard by which you can measure your ability to pay you are unable to determine if you will be sent to jail for providing for your own basic survival needs before paying someone else to care for your child. If the accused has no way to determine whether or not they are violating the law, the law is unconstitutionally vague.

While contempt is technically an exercise of equitable authority, the civil code generally specifies contempt as a possible enforcement mechanism you may also what to challenge the statute itself as being unconstitutionally vague. If contempt is going to be used as a civil law enforcement mechanism, then the legislature better provide a constitutionally sufficient standard to be applied. This unconstitutional vagueness is a tool of injustice that the courts are intentionally using to punish a class of people the State disfavors. Don’t let them get away with it just because they are judges.

Who is the enemy in child custody and child support enforcement?

One of the biggest mistakes parents make in child custody and child support enforcement hearings is thinking that the other parent is the enemy. While they may or may not be your enemy, they do NOT have power on their own to legally take your child from you. It is only with the help of a judge who is actively violating his or her Article VI oath and is actively violating his or her federal constitutional duty that your ex can really hurt you. But for your judge’s abuse of power, your parental rights cannot be taken from you.

Your true enemy is the person with the power to hurt you who is actively abusing that power. The list of ways in which your judge is violating your rights is a very long list. One of the challenges in fighting these judicial injustices is that there are so many violations that are being overlooked it becomes difficult to pin them down on anything. If you are distracted by targeting your ex when you should be targeting your judge, it will be impossible to prevail. This is why they create this artificial fight between parents that is intentionally designed to make a difficult relationship far more combative.

We have documented a number of ways in which your judge is violating your rights. We try hard to teach parents and their attorneys how to fight back. We provide a wealth of free services as well as paid services that you can take advantage of.  The most effective way to get self-help is to become a Gold Member to gain access to our more advanced and more detailed information resources.

Whatever you do, never ever think even for a moment that your judge will be fair and impartial. If your judge is acting under the State’s best interest of the child policy, your judge has already predetermined to act in the State’s interest against your interests. Your judge has literally conspired with the legislature to regulate the State’s policy, to enforce the State’s policy, and to adjudicate the lawfulness and constitutionality of the State’s policy, the State’s policy regulation, and the State’s policy enforcement.

What do you think the odds are that your judge will ever find that his or her regulatory or enforcement actions were unlawful or unconstitutional? Probably less than zero right!

The entire system is intentionally designed to violate the Separation of Powers Doctrine specifically so that the State can act unlawfully and unconstitutionally against a class of parent that the State despises and state judges are all too happy to join bandwagon of viewpoint discrimination against you and others like you. Not only is your judge prepared to harm you, your judge is intent on irreparably injuring your child by violating your child’s fundamental rights.

Never forget that your judge is absolutely prepared to irreparably injure your child and claim to be doing so in your child’s best interests just so that they can take pleasure in punishing you for making lawful and constitutionally protected choices that displease them. This is absolutely NOT someone you should ever trust.

Who is child support for?

In Turner, the Court shows its bias by presuming the parent receiving child support to be a woman and clearly states that “the proceeding is ultimately for her benefit.” Notice that the Supreme Court did NOT claim that the enforcement proceeding was for the child because it is NOT for the child. The child’s needs are being taken care of.

Where the other parent is NOT on public assistance, the other parent is providing the care and the child is receiving the care. Remember, this is the other parent who asked a court to violate your parental rights for no good reason. If you are a fit and willing parent then there was NO good reason. This enforcement hearing is for their benefit as a state provided reward for allowing the state to order and enforce child support.

Remember, Title IV-D pays the State to order and enforce child support. If the other parent didn’t deprive you of your equal rights, there would be no basis for the child support award. Your child is certainly NOT better off having lost a fit willing parent in favor of a monthly cash payment. Your judge is acting in the State’s and in your judge’s own best interests NOT in your child’s best interests.

If the other parent is on public assistance, then the proceeding is for the State’s benefit, the same State that created an unjust and unconstitutional family code through which they could steal your child from you so that they can get cash from the federal government.  Again, your child is being financially cared for and the people who are paying are the same people who conspired unlawfully to violate your constitutional rights. Why should you feel the least bit guilty for NOT paying these people for stealing your child. Don’t let them make you feel guilty and do NOT let the judge disparage you in open court.

Your judge is in the wrong and he knows it. Let him know he is wrong and get it on the record. JUST BE EXTRA CAREFUL NOT TO BE DISRESPECTFUL TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU CAN BE HELD IN CONTEMPT.

You can object to any disparagement as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination designed to cover up the court’s own unconstitutional actions by demonizing a fit willing parent for no reason other than to generate federal kickback money for the state through Title IV-D. We add a section in our sample motion that addresses this issue. If you want to push back to this degree then use this section. Otherwise, you can take the section out without hurting anything.

Your judge will undoubtedly criticize you not caring about your child. When he does, just remember that he is the one who injured your child and called it in your child’s best interest. Your judge has zero moral authority to criticize you while he is running an unconstitutional scam for the state legislature stealing children for cash.

Your judge and the system he oversees will do everything in their power to make you feel guilty so you will just shut up and pay like a good little slave to the State. If you are happy being a slave then just find a way to pay. If you are NOT happy being a slave to the State then fight back. The first step is to expose the truth widely and loudly.

What if I can pay?

If you can pay but you want to fight the child support and you want to care for your child directly, we can also help with that, just fill out the contact form and tell us about your child support issues.