ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : State-County Attack on ‘Deadbeat Dads’

Orange County has experienced an alarming increase in the number of “deadbeat dads,” parents who are not making child support payments ordered by the courts after families break up. Now the county’s alliance with the state in a new program offers hope that the problem can be reduced, which would benefit not just the children involved but also the taxpayers.

Last July the district attorney’s office reported 120,000 cases of parents--95% of them fathers--not paying child support, a 28% increase from the July, 1993, figure. The office said 20,000 new cases are foreseen in the current fiscal year. The deputy district attorney in charge of the county’s family support program said the rolls were increasing at an “uncontrollable rate” and aptly called the problem “beyond disgraceful.”

A county Social Services Agency official said the tab for welfare payments to women and children in the county not getting the child support due them has reached more than $131 million a year. About 80% of those receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children are on welfare because people are not meeting their financial responsibilities to their children, the official said.

The negligence of these “deadbeats” is unfair to everyone. The children obviously suffer, as do the former spouses, and taxpayers pick up the higher welfare costs. Besides offenses against fairness, there is also violation of a basic social tenet--that people who have children must provide for those children.

Last year California began a pilot program in six counties in which the Franchise Tax Board computer tracks down delinquent parents, who are then made to pay. The program was more successful than envisioned, taking in $34 million rather than the expected $12 million.

Next month Orange County will be one of 14 other counties in the state to join the state program, in which the computer can do in a day what it now takes county employees weeks to do.

Some fathers fall behind in their payments because of a job loss or medical bills. However, these can go into court to seek a reduction in payments. Parents who refuse to pay because of an unwillingness to spend money or hatred of the former spouse deserve no sympathy.

Lost houses, sudden poverty, applying for welfare, all impose an incalculable psychological toll on children, the innocent victims in their parents’ quarrels.