“Wait, we’re behind the other students and we’re supposed to catch up by going slower than they are?” – Bart Simpson
Yesterday, I spent the day in Magistrate’s Court. Magistrate’s court principally concerns matters of unpaid child support.
While waiting for my case to be called, I watched a man go to jail for not paying child support. The man owed approximately $30,000 in back support.
Yesterday marked about the dozenth time the man appeared in court for failing to pay support over the past year. He’d been given chance after chance to get a job and start making payments. He claimed to have done job searches but lacked any proof he had done anything remotely close to a job search.
He said he was starting a job being paid $3 an hour under the table next week. The judge didn’t buy that.
When it became apparent to everyone in the courtroom the man was going to jail – he pleaded with the judge for one more day to come up with a payment. He was sure he could find the money. The judge told him to that if he had access to any money that now would be a great time to make a payment but the man predictably had no money on him.
The judge found that the man had flaunted all sorts of prior orders and explained that in order for the court to exist its orders need to mean something.
As the marshals circled the man, he pleaded some more. But to no avail.
The judge ordered him to be incarcerated. He was placed in handcuffs and removed from the court.
The man couldn’t pay child support because he didn’t have a job. For the period of his incarceration, his ability to obtain a job went from unlikely to impossible.
Post originally published on April 30, 2010