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Wait....no passport if you owe child support? I hate deadbeat dads as much as the next guy but that's kind of fucked.
Not really. If you have money for a vacation, you have money to support your kid. When I worked in enforcement, I had a guy really call me and tell me that his fiancee's parents paid for a honeymoon as a wedding gift so he needed to get a passport when he owed like $7k to his kids' mom. Surprise surprise, he suddenly had the money when there was something he cared about on the line. I actually had several people manage to find large sums of money when their trips were on the line even though they'd all spent years claiming they couldn't afford to pay.
It may not be a vacation. It could be death of a family member or work travel. There are all kinds of non-pleasure reasons to need a passport.
Then I guess those people can tell their family that they can't come because they've been blowing off their kids for years, then. The vast majority of payments on my cases were pretty small in the grand scheme of what it costs to raise a child - I'm talking a couple hundred dollars a month or less, usually, so to reach the threshold where you can't get a passport ($2500), it wasn't just one missed payment or a couple months of unemployment screwing them over. Most owed waaay more than $2500 by the time they bothered to call me.
That doesn’t mean withholding your passport is wrong if you’re not paying child support. Stop being an asshole and pay for the kids you brought into this world and abandoned.
A passport would also make it easier for someone to just leave the country permanently, and never pay their child support. This seems like a reasonable thing to prevent by denying the passport.
Oh yeah, I honestly agree...fuck a dude taking a vacation when he's way behind on child support. But at the same time...iono...somehow denying a passport over that feels weird?
Fleeing to another country and not returning would make holding individuals who do owe child support much harder...
I actually knew a guy who did that and goes on my list of "biggest pieces of shit Ive ever known"
Was a bible thumping "christian" who couldnt wait to lecture people. Girlfriend got pregnant, he volunteered to go work at a catholic mission in Africa somewhere before she had the baby. Never came back.
Fair point.
For me, the idea of the opposite feels weird… being able to get a passport when you are delinquent on child support.
It’s not like they are being denied health insurance or food stamps.