Counsel for Collections : Dennis Cohen’s Clients Love Him: Dads May Not. He Thinks of Himself as Robin Hod.

Delores’ ex-husband didn’t start out a deadbeat dad. For three months, the $100,000-a-year attorney promptly paid the court-ordered child support of $1,000 every month. Without warning, he slacked off. “One month, he paid me $25,” she says. Then he quit paying altogether.

Without his monthly check, Delores’ finances rapidly became rocky. Her income as a temporary secretary couldn’t cover the house payment, child care and school clothes for the kids. In exchange for his promise to let her and their two children stay in the house, she signed it over to her ex-husband. But a year later he served her with eviction papers and a statement denying any past due support. When her 9-year-old daughter saw the eviction notice tacked to the garage door, she cried, “Mom, Daddy’s making us leave!”

Chasing the Checks

For seven grueling years, the single working mother chased after support checks. She contacted attorney after attorney. Some refused her case on grounds they knew her husband professionally. Some asked exorbitant retainer fees. Nothing seemed to help. Says Delores, who asked that her last name not be used: “Every time we went to court, the hearing seemed to be postponed.”

Her luck changed in 1987 when she met the self-described Robin Hood of Wilshire Boulevard --Dennis A. Cohen, a former Beverly Hills divorce lawyer who now specializes in collecting child support. (Cohen’s new newsletter, The Robin Hood Report, is a collection of client success stories and advice.) Cohen got a court hearing, proved that Delores’ ex-husband owed thousands of dollars and collected $32,000 in overdue support. A second payment of $70,000 is due early next year.

In the 10 years since he founded the Center for the Enforcement of Family Support, Cohen and his band of seven merry men and women have collected $8 million in overdue child and spousal support payments. Some were hefty five-figure sums, others just a few thousand dollars (though still sorely needed). “We take from the deadbeat dads and give to their families,” says Cohen, who observes that nearly all of his clients are women.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office wholeheartedly supports Cohen’s alternative collection center. The District Attorney’s collection services are free but the process can be slow. “There are a lot of cases--about 250,000--and about 600 people to work on them,” says Wayne Doss, assistant director of the Bureau of Family Support Operations in the D.A.’s office. “Cohen’s work complements our own. He’s helping to get a handle on the problem.”

Cohen’s own clients talk about him in terms usually reserved for those rare pediatricians who return midnight telephone calls. “I’ve finally got an advocate,” sighs Suzan Fender, a Seattle teacher whose ex-husband owes her $75,000. Says Nadya Batchelor, a former client who received $40,000 in overdue support: “He’s a knight in shining armor.”

Cohen could use a solid coat of armor for protection. One ex-spouse warned him at a court hearing, “You don’t know what I can do to you.” Minutes later a passer-by rushed into the building yelling, “Anyone here own an RX-7? It’s on fire.” Another parent mailed him a drawing of a hand with the longest finger pointing upward. An ex-cop shoved him against the wall before a hearing. And he’s received scores of death threats, along with fervent promises to rearrange his anatomy.

Cohen, who doesn’t disclose his home address, copes with the job stress by relying on physical activity. He sails, rollerskates and dances every chance he gets. (His red dancing shoes are legendary around the office. At last count, he owned four pairs.) Even at work he looks like he stepped out of GQ. During a recent interview at his Wilshire Boulevard office, the 43-year-old attorney wore fashionably baggy khaki trousers, a maroon rayon shirt and leather sandals. Suits and ties, he explains, are only for court days. “Clothes should be fun,” the attorney says, showing off pink and green socks.

Office camaraderie helps, too, to relieve tensions. His partner Keith Clemens needles Cohen by politely interrupting the interview to introduce himself as the guy in the office who wears a tie but no red shoes. It’s a zany office with an informal atmosphere, given to gleeful outbursts. “At any time, you might hear someone yelling, ‘Yay, we got him,’ ” Cohen laughs.

But he knows his clients’ lives are far from fun. Here are the grim statistics:

- One of four mothers with a court order for child support won’t see a dime, according to Census Bureau figures.

- Men pay more for monthly car payments than child support, according to a Denver Law Journal study.

- Men with high incomes don’t pay their share any more frequently than men with lower incomes, several studies show.

- While $11 billion in child support was owed in 1985, only $7 billion was ever collected, according to the latest available Census Bureau statistics.

Ex-husbands don’t pay, Cohen believes, largely because the system is too lax. “Men think they have a choice,” Cohen fumes. “If we had a choice about paying taxes, how many people do you think would pay?” The attorney has suggested legislation that would attach a penalty for each delinquent payment, similar to the charges levied on bounced checks.

Cohen dismisses the notion that men don’t pay because they are denied visitation, a charge frequently made by fathers’ rights groups. “Maybe 1 in 10 fathers has a legitimate beef about visitation,” Cohen says, citing several studies. “But 65% of the mothers wish the fathers were more actively involved in their kids’ lives.”

To collect the past-due money, Cohen and his staff rely on some classic private-eye tricks. “If a guy is working for General Motors, it’s pretty easy to garnish his wages,” Cohen says. “But if he’s self-employed, you have to find his assets.” No problem for Cohen. “Suppose the ex-spouse is a (self-employed) hairdresser,” he says. “We send a friend of the client in to get her hair cut. When her check clears, we know where the bank account is. Then we can seize it.”

Trapping a pool cleaner was a bit more convoluted. “We had someone follow him and copy down the addresses (of customers),” says Cohen. “Then we got the customers’ names and served them writs of execution, asking them to pay any money they owed the pool man to the sheriff instead. It got his attention. Customers said, ‘You don’t take care of your kids? I’m going to find a new pool man.’ ”

Persistence is the name of the game. Clemens, a former law school classmate who teamed up with Cohen four years ago, remembers one delinquent dad who didn’t seem to have any assets at all. “Finally, we discovered he had a motorcycle,” Clemens recalls. “We had the sheriff take the motorcycle. To get the bike back, he paid the sheriff $11,000 in overdue support. When he didn’t pay again, the sheriff took the bike once more. Again he paid up. Now the kid’s almost 18, so the father’s not paying anymore.” Will Clemens take the bike one last time? “No comment,” he laughs.

On Contingency Basis

Cohen’s tactics rile not only delinquent fathers. Some child advocates accuse him of taking money away from the kids as well. Though Cohen only charges $35 to start a case, he works on a contingency basis, asking clients to pay him fully one-third of the past-due child support they collect. However, other private lawyers charge roughly the same.

Geraldine Jensen, a divorced mother and the founder of the nonprofit Assn. for Children for Enforcement of Support in Toledo, Ohio, advises parents not to pay contingency fees. She opposes them because “they take the child support money to pay for the service.” Instead, she believes the government should take a more active role in helping parents collect, and parents should band together in advocacy groups to improve government collection action.

But Sue Speir, a divorced mother of two who directs Single Parents United ‘N Kids (SPUNK), routinely sends clients over to Cohen. “They’re more successful than the D.A.’s office. It’s that simple.”

“As I see it, this problem has gotten out of hand,” says Cohen, who also offers his services on an hourly basis. (But most mothers can’t afford up-front fees.) “Nearly half of my clients have already been to the district attorney for help (and not collected). They say two-thirds is better than nothing.”

Cohen hopes to popularize his collection model. He plans to set up a national network of attorneys who devote a significant part of their practices to child support collection. “I’ve already developed the computer software to help them start up the business,” Cohen says.

(Cohen already has competition. A San Antonio business firm is franchising collection agencies around the country. There are now seven in operation; an eighth will open in Glendale this fall.)

A Child of Divorce

Why does Cohen relish work shunned by many of his more status-conscious colleagues? One impetus is his own experience as a child of divorce. Although his own divorce was amicable, his parents’ pattern put him on an emotional roller coaster for years. They divorced first during Cohen’s junior high days, remarried and divorced again while he was in college.

Even so, Cohen got into the specialty practice only by accident. A UCLA law school graduate, Cohen was working for a Beverly Hills law firm, doing divorce and personal injury lawsuits, when he first met Nadya Batchelor who came in seeking back support. After a brief interview, he recommended that the firm turn down the case because it would be too time-consuming and unprofitable. “But the senior partner took the case,” Cohen recalls with a smirk, “and promptly assigned it to me.” Cohen was so radicalized by the problems of child support collection that he eventually left the firm to found his center. Batchelor became his client again a year later.

Many of Cohen’s clients come to him after years of trying to tough it out on their own. Cohen suggests, ever so gently, a different point of view. “Mothers owe it to their kids to collect, no matter how bastardly the ex has acted,” says Cohen. “I’m not out to kill the dads, but to empower the moms to go after support due them.”

Suzan Fender, the Seattle mother owed more than $80,000, learned Cohen’s lesson well: “A part of me said, ‘Cut your losses.’ But the other part said, ‘This is money due my children.’ ”

When some women hire Cohen, their ex-spouses respond with threats. One ex-husband said, “If you come after me for support, the kids will never see me again.”

But often the reverse happens. “When a delinquent dad starts paying,” Cohen says, “the relationship with the kids is often normalized. I had a case of one deliquent father who hadn’t seen his child in three years, vowing to go to jail before he’d pay a penny.

“We had the sheriff’s office seize his Corvette. The man paid up his past-due child support to reclaim his car, calmed down and reasoned: ‘If I’m going to pay support, I might as well see the kid.’ As a result, the two have developed a good relationship. The child has a dad, the dad has a son and the mom’s getting the help she needs.” Cohen beams: “Now that’s a success on all grounds. It’s nice to wear a white hat.”