Collection Agencies Target Deadbeat Moms, Dads : Child Support: Entrepreneurs step in where government fails to tread. Some firms boast of high success rates; others complain that bureaucrats won’t cooperate.

Rebecca Morrick of Grand Junction, Colo., grew so frustrated over her husband not paying support for their three children that she set up her own collection agency.

In business less than a year, her company--called Trak-Ex--is working on $1 million in collections, taking a 25% commission.

Now when a deadbeat dad tells her the check is in the mail, “It’s in the mail,” she said.

“I do it to help the mothers,” Morrick said. “I’ve been there and I know they need help. My real goal is to mend relationships. If these men are paying, maybe they’ll see their children and be the father their children need.”

Charlie Drake of San Antonio, Tex., who believes he “gave birth to the industry” in 1988, says his Children’s Support Services gets more than 50% of the money it goes after.

Government agencies were only able to collect from deadbeat parents 19% of the time in 1993.

“They create excellent laws, but they don’t use them,” Drake said.

Congress passed a law in 1992 making it a federal crime to cross state lines to avoid paying child support, but a recent check showed only five people had been prosecuted. An estimated $14 billion is owed to 9 million children, officials say.

Private companies have moved in to fill the gap. Some have slick recordings on 800 numbers promising “extraordinarily high success” rates in “each and every state.”

At least two states, Mississippi and Utah, have hired private agencies to help them collect. California has authorized collection agencies to cross state lines to garnishee the earnings of delinquent parents.

“Government can’t do everything. We could use their help,” said Kathy Stumm, director of Colorado’s Child Support Enforcement Division.

Richard Casey Hoffman, a former Texas assistant attorney general and now president of Child Support Enforcement of Austin, says the government should focus on welfare cases.

“Incredible as it may sound, Ivana Trump would be eligible for free services in 35 of the 50 states and pay only a token fee in the other 15,” Hoffman said.

Drake says there are 49 companies in a national association of companies that collect child support at offices in 29 states.

Most require a small application fee, ranging from $25 to $35, and charge a 25% commission if they are successful. The agencies don’t take welfare cases because money collected would be taken by the states to recover welfare costs.

Investigators don’t like to talk in detail about how they get their information, speaking only in general terms about having access to databases, such credit reports.

“A lot of the time you get a lot of information from relatives and neighbors,” Morrick said. She might call and ask what they see in the deadbeat’s driveway.

Many times the deadbeats are there for the picking if local authorities will budge from their offices. She recently called police in Michigan about a deadbeat, giving them his address. He was in jail within 24 hours, she said.

Most of her clients, like Jesse Opp of Wichita, Kan., live in other states.

“She did a really good job,” Opp said. “I’ve finally gotten somewhere. He was years behind. I had been trying to go through the courts but they are so backlogged it takes them a year to even get going.”

Her present husband, Roger, now is using Morrick to try to recover money owed by his previous wife for running up their credit cards when they divorced.

Dan Price, who has been in the collection agency business in Casper, Wyo., for 25 years and in child-support collections for three, doesn’t believe private agencies will eliminate the problem. He says he has had so much trouble getting cooperation from authorities that he no longer solicits new child-support clients.

Drake is more optimistic. “We’ve just had a record-breaking month,” he said.