• 02
  • February
    2012

There's a huge, qualitative difference between raising a child and buying a car. But if most parents knew just how expensive it is to care for a child, they might well suffer from sticker shock. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated in 2010 that it costs over $200,000 for a middle-class family to raise a child from birth to age 18.

Understandably, then, child support is an important matter to resolve for many divorcing couples in Georgia. When it comes time to talk with an Atlanta divorce attorney, arrangements for making child support payments are often a key issue.

Recently, the question of jailing so-called "deadbeat dads" has garnered considerable attention in Georgia. Five fathers who were jailed for failing to pay child support are challenging the use of incarceration for nonpayment in a lawsuit brought against the state of Georgia

The men argue that, if someone is unable to pay, jailing them for nonpayment amounts to a form of debtor's prison. Their lawsuit may become a much larger one, if thousands of other parents who did jail time for failure to pay child support are allowed to join in.

Furious former spouses are often eager to see their exes behind bars. It may well be that some parents who did not pay child support are actually able to. But there are also other parents who get stuck in jail because they simply cannot pay the "purge fee" needed to remove the contempt citation a judge has issued against them.

Yet another group of parents may be able to pay, but push back against their ex-spouse's anger by preferring to stay in jail rather than pay the support.

Source: "Jailing a deadbeat dad amounts to debtor's prison?" Atlanta Journal Constitution, 1-30-12