Child-Support Offices Losing Public Support : Bureaucracy: Agencies treat paying parents like criminals but fail to collect from ‘deadbeat dads,’ critics say. Officials blame a sharp increase in caseloads but admit changes may be necessary.

Ken Riley considers himself a good citizen and a solid father. But lately, the Foothill Ranch man says he has been getting treatment best reserved for some deadbeat dad.

Riley charges that mistakes by the Orange County agency that collects child-support payments have left a “black mark” on his credit report and a lien on his house even though he has kept up with payments to his two children.

An angered Riley has written scores of letters complaining to county and state officials. He’s even asked the Orange County Grand Jury to investigate.

“I’ve had to scream bloody murder,” Riley groused. “What they’re doing is an abuse of power. They’re like a gang of Keystone Kops down there.”

Up and down the state, disgruntled parents such as Riley have grown increasingly vocal in their criticism of the patchwork of offices that handle the difficult job of collecting child-support payments in California’s 58 counties.

They contend the agencies are unresponsive and sometimes make dramatic mistakes in calculating child-support payments. And since the agencies have prosecutorial powers from district attorney’s offices, law-abiding parents have sometimes found themselves being treated like Public Enemy No. 1.

“Almost every father who goes into the Family Support Division to try to prove they made the payments, to try to work it out, is treated worse than the common criminal,” said Marv Chapman, vice president for United Fathers of America. “It’s out of control.”

Even normally quarrelsome opponents in child-support cases--which most often pit custodial mothers against non-custodial fathers--find common ground on the issue of shoddy government performance.

Women’s groups complain that when there are deadbeat dads, the child-support programs have been ineffective at cracking down on the offenders.

As a result, many are calling for a complete overhaul of the system, including a suggestion to shift the responsibility for child-support programs from county government to the state welfare offices or federal tax authorities.

But not everyone is ready to dump the county offices that currently run the child-support show. Boosters say many of the problems are isolated issues that have been unfairly portrayed as a systemwide failure.

They contend the glitches stem from the vast proliferation of child-support cases, which have more than doubled statewide in the past five years. In Orange County, the number of child-support cases handled by the Family Support Division has skyrocketed from about 40,000 to almost 100,000 since 1989.

The rising numbers have come in part because the state in recent years has dramatically boosted the child-support payments required from most non-custodial parents, making it tougher for some to keep up with the monthly payments.

Leslie Frye, chief of the state’s Office of Child Support, sees room for improvement within the current arrangement, but cautions against going too far.

“We are acutely aware of the need to make the system more responsive and accessible,” Frye said. “But the nature of the issues we deal with--love and hate, power and money--means there will always be people unhappy with the system.”

She and others also say the system must be vigorous in collecting child-support payments because they go a long way toward keeping single mothers and their children--the fastest growing poverty group in the nation--off of the welfare rolls.

More than half the cases handled by the family-support offices are parents on welfare. In addition, child-support officials grapple with a ballooning number of cases involving financially strapped mothers and unidentified fathers. There were more than 70,000 such cases in California last year alone.

By law, the agencies also must undertake collection duties requested by any parent who claims support isn’t being paid. But many parents don’t find it necessary to seek out such assistance.

While the state’s Family Support Divisions handled more than 1.8 million problem cases last year, authorities said a roughly equal number involved parents who willingly paid child support under agreements negotiated with their spouses.

For many parents targeted by the county authorities, the tactics employed by the Family Support Divisions come as a shock. They lament the ignominy of attacking their wages, the sullied credit reports and the looming liens.

“We keep getting letters from people who are trying to refinance their houses to get more money to make their child-support payments, but they can’t because of these liens,” said Mikki Bako Sorensen, counsel to the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

“Sure, there are a lot of jerks out there not paying their support, but when someone is making an effort, you’ve got to give them a break and give them a chance to be economically viable.”

Consider the case of Keith Thompson. Thompson lives in Lake Forest with his second family. Two of his children from a previous marriage live in Idaho with his ex-wife. When Thompson’s support was raised 400% last March, his ex-wife took pity and agreed to accept a lesser payment.

But authorities in Idaho and Orange County haven’t been able to straighten it out. Thompson’s paycheck is still getting docked by Orange County, even though his ex-wife hasn’t received a support check from the county since August. The strapped former spouse, meanwhile, has now demanded that Thompson send money to keep her afloat.

To make ends meet, Thompson has been working 60 to 80 hours a week on his job at a power plant. “We’re maxed out,” said Thompson’s wife, Dianna. “We’re going under, under, under.”

For others, there’s the matter of interest payments. The federal government has ordered all counties to begin charging “retroactive interest” on overdue payments. In some cases, the interest was charged on delinquent accounts that were paid off years ago.

As a result, some absent parents have been surprised by huge bills--some exceeding $10,000--for interest they never fathomed they would owe. They complain that it is as if the rules were changed at the end of the game.

Women’s rights groups have their own complaints. While agreeing with the fathers that Family Support Divisions are not performing well, they say the agencies need to do a better job of tapping support payments from deadbeat dads. Many women are forced to play detective and track down the assets of a spouse.

Leora Gershenzon, an attorney with Legal Services of Northern California, says the child-support agencies are unfriendly fortresses too riddled with middle managers instead of caseworkers. She also suggests the independent agencies run by each county cost taxpayers more than would a unified statewide program.

To that end, Gershenzon has been pushing a bill introduced last year by state Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood) to incorporate the county child-support offices into a single state agency. The bill has been stalled in a legislative committee, but other legislation is also being discussed to make the system more user-friendly.

At the same time, boosters of the system say many of the county family support agencies are already trying to put a better face forward.

“Despite all the raps you’ve heard, I’d say the district attorneys in California are doing at least a B-plus job,” said Wayne D. Doss, chief of the Los Angeles County child-support division and president of the National Child Support Enforcement Organization. “We face a dichotomy of expectations: On the one hand we’re expected to be efficient and cost-effective, and at the same time we’re criticized because we’re not as soft and warm and cuddly as people would like us to be.”

He and other experts from around the state have been meeting to map out an agenda for changes to improve the system, ideas they hope will eventually be embraced by the Legislature. Meanwhile, a new automated statewide system will soon be handling mundane billing and paperwork chores, allowing caseworkers to focus more on the public.

In Orange County, a study by the Price Waterhouse accounting firm is expected to yield several suggested changes when it’s released early next year, including some designed to improve the office’s relationship with parents.

While mistakes occur, they can often be traced directly back to the parents, whose idea of record-keeping may be “a few receipts in a shoe box,” Doss said.

More often than not, the two parties in a child-support dispute will tote vastly different claims. It is, Orange County child-support chief Jan Sturla said, “kind of like trying to referee at the Alamo.”

Complaints about liens are unflinchingly common. Sturla, for one, suggests the issue has been overblown. He regularly gets calls from lending institutions checking on loan applicants, and those who don’t owe back support are quickly given the green light, Sturla said.

As for parents who yelp about authorities running roughshod over their credit report, the child-support officials have little sympathy. Such matters, they reason, are no different than missing payment on a credit card--if you owe, you owe.

Meanwhile, the new computer system promises better billing in counties that currently don’t issue monthly statements, keeping parents better abreast of their child-support obligation. “If Macy’s didn’t send me a bill each month,” state chief Frye noted, “I’d be surprised to see how large it is at the end of the year.”

While the program has room for improvement, it has done much--warts and all--to help children, Frye said. “I think we’ve always got to look to this fundamental issue of whether a child has an absolute right for support,” Frye said. “I know having a large debt is a daunting thing, but I keep thinking: What about the children?”

Support System

Child support is a growth industry in Orange County. From 1989 to 1993, a variety of indicators increased.

* The number of cases has more than doubled, while the percentage of families receiving welfare payments jumped by about one-quarter.

Cases (In thousands): 99,000

Percent on welfare: 54%

* The number of people working in the county district attorney’s Family Support Division, including attorneys, increased by about 50%, as did the average number of cases handled by caseworkers.

Support division staffing: 327

Average cases per caseworker: 1,319

* The amount of child support collected rose slightly more than 50%. In millions of dollars:

$46 million

Sources: Orange County district attorney’s Family Support Division; California Office of Child Support; Researched by ERIC BAILEY / Los Angeles Times