Attorney General Ken Paxton on Child Support–

When you think of child support, do you think of a child in need? That's what we have been culturally conditioned to believe. Just likeanything else, until we are educated, we only know what we are fed.

What if you found out that child support was being used to enrich government officials in your state, and that in order to enrich themthe child had to be stripped of one of their fit and loving parents?

Attorney General Ken Paxton was caught bragging to his audience that his office gets "a large amount of money from child support." Heclaims that child support is a program to help take care of our children and make sure that they don't need government assistance, onvideo at a Tarrant County Tea Party event, last Monday night, February 13, 2017, by Independent film Producer, Jeff Morgan.

What he doesn't mention is the number of children being hurt by this program. The majority of the parents who pay child support aren'tthe ones who would end up on government assistance anyway. Parents who would end up on government programs are usually too broke to paychild support in the first place.

The AG states in this video that 62% of his office depends on child support money, two-thirds of his budget comes from it, and for everydollar that his office spends collecting child support, the state brings in $12.27 in child support. This $12.27 is the amount that thefederal government uses to determine how much the state gets paid through Title IV-D, so the higher this number the more the state getsback from the federal government.

Ken claims that Texas is the most efficient of all states, with the next closest state being South Dakota at just over $10 for everydollar. California, a state much larger in population than Texas is only at $2 for every dollar.

The AG states that his office has 4200 employees and 2600 of them are for child support for over a million children each year.

Court dockets reflect a growing number of child support enforcement filings. In fact, child support enforcement had the largest growthin the state of Texas last year, 2016 of 40% a 14% increase from last year and the largest increase overall in family law categories.

Post-modification and enforcement cases in family law saw the largest increase.

More than 40 percent of the 880,823 cases filed in district courts were family cases.

Are the Courts Creating the Increased Caseload Unnecessarily?

Generally, a parent ordered to pay child support in the state of Texas has their time with their child restricted more than the naturalrestriction than the separation from the other parent would already impose. (See how the Bar lobbies against equal parentinghere.) Combine that with the low standard ofevidence in the family courts and the non-existent requirement to show that the parent abandoned the child in the first place, you havechildren being stripped of a fit and loving parent so the state can collect their money to keep feeding their employees in the childsupport program, not to feed the children; these children were never at risk of not being fed in the first place.

Further mothers are more often made the primary caretaker of the child than fathers. Placing children in essentially single parent homesand in cases of parental alienation fatherless or motherless homes. And these statistics pretty muchhave much been static as far back as 1993.

Yet, the state would still have you believe that awarding child support protects the child's best interest. From our standpoint, as longas the family courts are failing to protect each parent and child's rights, the only interest the state is protecting is its ownpocketbook. (See how the Attorney General is indoctrinating the high school youthhere.)

Whose Interests are Being Protected?

Child support is being ordered against parents who never failed to support their children in the first place and whose children werenever at risk of needing government program assistance.

Title IV-D was originally designed to keep people off of welfare, TANF services. But as time has gone on, child support has made its wayinto middle and upper class parents pocketbooks.

Many of us hear about celebrities going through divorce and being awarded child support. Take for instance, most recently,Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt is quoted as saying that he “has no issue taking care of” their six children:: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twinsVivienne and Knox, but he will not pay her money to take care of their children.[1] "These cases amount to nothing more than "bloodmoney." This is where a parent is forced to pay for their children just because they are no longer with the other parent.

The Pitt children were never at risk of ending up on welfare.

Or child support is awarded to assist the other with the expense of raising the child. Constitutionally, and according to most statestatutes both parents owe a duty and responsibility to their children individually. And unless a parent knowingly and voluntarily hasabandoned their child, then the only thing the court is ensuring is that the parent being stripped of their time and rights to theirchild will be back in court repeatedly to get their child back.

Just recently, Thomas Fidler, founder of The Father's Rights Movement, made a post onFacebook stating that paying childsupport was more expensive than actually directly raising his children. Thomas has twins. He says that when he was paying childsupport he couldn't afford to pay for a place of his own and had to sleep on his mother's couch. But that after he got 50/50 with hischildren and directly supported his children through raising them, he could afford his own house and all of the necessaries in life. Hecomments that it is amazing how he was able to support himself and his children for much less than what he had previously been orderedto pay in child support.

Many parents are being driven below the poverty line due to child support awards that exceed their means. Child support in 2015 drove254,000 noncustodial parents into poverty.[4]

Would you consider this in the best interest of the children?

There are other states affected by these policies in the same way, driving corruption and creating dependencies in our state agencies.

Carol Rhoades, a former Friend of the Court employee in Michigan states that

“no one wanted to improve services or hear about abuses within the system because every worker in these huge bureaucracies was trying tokeep his/her job by covering up any errors or problems.”

And Marsha Maines, speaking at the U.S. Capitol at a Father's Rights event, reveals that the State of Virginia's "…purposeis to divide families and promote divorce because it brings in over a half a billion dollars to the State of Virginia and they obtainmillions of dollars of federal incentive dollars based on the number of cases that they can create.”

*the unlabeled data and statistics in this post are from the OCA

[1]Brad Refuses to Pay Angelina Jolie $100,000 in Child Support.

[2]Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie: No Child Support for You!

[3] Attorney General Ken Paxton answers questions on child support, grandparents’ rights, Title IV-D funding, child abuse, childtrafficking, child abduction, and corrupt district attorneys.

[4] OCSE 2015

The National Family Law Policy Center