Passport Denied When Parent Owes Support Arrears

You are a non-custodial parent planning a vacation to Cancun with your kids. Your passport has lapsed and you apply for a new one, along with your children. Instead of receiving your passport, you get a letter from the Secretary of State denying your applications. Why?

Because you owe more than $2500 in child support, and because the custodial parent must assent to the passports for the kids. Child support enforcement has had a federal component for several years now.

Back in 2001, the U.S. government mandated that states align their child support accounts with state-wide computer programs. In Michigan, all county Friends of the Court have implemented the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES). MiCSES then certifies the support owed and reports those in arrears over $2500 to the Office of Child Support Enforcement, which is under the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services (DHS). Next, DHS notifies the State Department which denies the passport application.

Also, in cases of divorce or custody disputes, both parents must execute passport applications for children under age 14 pursuant to the federal Two Parent Consent Law passed back in July 2001.

Once you are on the State Department's list, you do not automatically come off, even when the arrears are paid. Eventually, your passport will lapse and you will be unable to get a new one without a hassle. In addition, you may be stopped at the boarder unable to leave or re-enter the country. If this occurs, the DHS has summarized the steps you should take on its useful website: http://tinyurl.com/mdael3.

The MiCSES state-wide computer program has several automatic enforcement components in addition to passport denial. The computer automatically reports certified arrears to the U.S. Treasury and the State of Michigan for tax refund intercepts. Arrears are also automatically reported to credit bureaus.

If you are owed child support, or want to address an arrearage, contact our law office to discuss your options.

Divorce in the NFL

Maximum temptation; continuous travel; lots of money. These are just some of the factors that contribute to the excessive divorce-rate among players in the NFL.

There are no solid statistics, but an unofficial poll along with anecdotal evidence puts the divorce-rate for NFL players at 70% according to a recent NYT article; significantly higher than the overall divorce-rate of about 50%.

Another statistic, perhaps correlated to the high rate of divorce among players, is that within two-years of their retirement, a shocking 78% of these NFL players are bankrupt, unemployed or divorced. There are good reasons for this.

Among professional athletes, football players have a rough row to hoe. They suffer more physical pain on average than in other sports due to the aggressive high-speed nature of their game. They have the shortest average career among all pro athletes; three and a half seasons according to the Players' Association. Contracts for the average player, while lucrative, are usually non-guaranteed and contain significant injury clauses. These stressors can transfer to the player's marriage.

The recent shooting death of one of the league's preeminent quarterbacks, Steve McNair, brings to a head the significance of an NFL player's retirement. McNair was widely perceived as the consummate family man. Married, but killed by his girlfriend, he is one player who sadly will not be adding to the NFL divorce-rate.

Most of us would blame McNair for his own fate. Some insiders, on the other hand, point to several factors that increase the toxicity of marriages among NFL players: rampant infidelity, the "trophy-wife" concept, women who target professional athletes, player entourages that tend to suppress the intimacy required if a marriage is to work.

Perhaps most significant is the painful transition of the athlete from the gridiron to retirement. Issues of self-worth come into play among a group of macho athletes not used to focused self-awareness and who have a seemingly genetic resistance to counseling.

Mothers, don't let your girls grow-up to be NFL wives...

Child Custody & the 100-Mile Rule

The Michigan Legislature long-ago codified the rules of divorce in the Child Custody Act. One of the provisions in the Act addresses when one parent proposes to move:

"a parent of a child whose custody is governed by court order shall not change a legal residence of the child to a location that is more than 100 miles from the child's legal residence at the time of the commencement of the action in which the order is issued."

A recent published (thus binding) decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals provides guidance as to how those 100-miles are calculated.

In Bowers -v- VanderMuellen-Bowers, the parents had joint legal custody of their son. Father, who had been awarded so-called "physical custody", wanted to move from Big Rapids to Byron, Michigan. The distance is very close to 100-miles.

The lower court adopted a "radial-miles" calculation, rather than using "road-miles", as the Mother asserted. The radial-mile method of calculation involves a simple calculation using a ruler and a map to connect two points, "as the crow flies"; not as a vehicle would travel on actual roads. In the Bowers case, the distance would be more than 100-miles if actual road-miles were calculated, and the move could have been disallowed by the family court judge.

In affirming the lower court's radial-miles decision, the Court of Appeals borrowed analysis from a 2007 Michigan Supreme Court case interpreting the 20-mile restriction of a public employee's residence in the Public Officers & Employees Act. Therefore, Michigan Courts do not calculate miles using actual road miles, the way they are calculated by Google Maps or Mapquest.

If you have a case that involves a proposed move which you do not think is in the best interests of your child, contact our office to discuss your options.

Divorce and Facebook: Privacy Be Gone

Is there any privacy among partners in a marriage; among parties to a divorce proceeding? In this web 2.0 era, some people are their own worst enemies.

Photos or statements posted on social media sites lose all aspects of privacy. Deleting the post does not remove it from cyberspace. The Internet is resource-rich terrain for discovery-seeking divorce lawyers.

In a divorce, it is advisable to maintain privacy and restrict confidences to one's professional counselors. Why then, are so many people drawn to plasting their every move (including horrible gaffs) on the Internet via the web's easily accesible variety of social networking platforms?

This trend was analyzed in the divorce context in a recent Time magazine article:
http://tinyurl.com/m9n6lh
The article includes a link to five "Facebook Don'ts":
http://tinyurl.com/nml7vq

No doubt; lawyers can and do take advantage of web postings in custody battles and in the property division contest. If you need to have a web posting preserved, or have the source of a post tracked, contact our firm to assess your options.

Casino Winnings & Lawsuit Proceeds to be Attached for Child Support Arrears

The Michigan Senate is expected to pass a pair of bills designed to utilize proceeds derived from lawsuits and casino winnings, to satisfy past-due child support. The new law will require the recipient to provide notice of the expected windfall to the custodial parent.

In the context of lawsuit proceeds, the payor's family court lawyer, or the litigator that obtains the proceeds for the payor, will be responsible to provide notice of the payor's gain via ordinary mail to the custodial parent.

The bills are currently under consideration in the Senate's Family and Human Services Committee and is expected to be signed into law this session. The provisions are expected to provide modest indeterminate relief to the State by reducing amounts spent on other "means-tested" assistance programs. The proceeds are also expected to reduce some administrative costs.

If you are receiving support and are aware that the payor in your case is about to come into lawsuit proceeds, or has recently received a casino "windfall", contact us to explore your rights to such proceeds.

Identity Theft Concerns in Family Court Orders

The Michigan House of Representatives introduced a trio of bills which will require judgments of divorce, orders of filiation (between non-married parents) and child support orders to omit a parent's personal information.

It should be noted, however, that a parent's name and address are deemed outside the scope of the phrase "personal identifying information", as that term would be used in the legislation. Personal information is defined as: telephone number, driver license or state personal identification card number, Social Security number, place of employment, employee identification number, employer or taxpayer identification number, government passport number, health insurance identification number, mother's maiden name, demand deposit account number, savings account number, financial transaction device account number or the person's account password, stock or other security certificate or account number credit card number, vital record, or medical records or information.

These bills continue the Legislature's efforts to combat identity theft. Several years ago, social security numbers (once routinely included in a variety of support-related orders and divorce decrees) were precluded from being submitted to a court, even where a form or order contained a feild for the information. Now, only the last four-digits are used, and it is a misdemeanor to include a person's social security number on a public document. The bills also come on the heals of the drafting, consideration and passing of the Identity Theft Protection Act in 2004.

The bills, introduced to the House just last month (April 2009), are scheduled for discussion at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, June 3, 2009.

Family law attorneys are becoming increasingly sophisticated and creative in their drafting of these orders in a fashion that avoids telling the public too much about their clients. If you have additional questions on this or other family law topics that may affect your case, feel free to give us a call to discuss.

Same Sex Unions Gain Ground in Midwest

In a highly controversial ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court, same sex couples received a green-light for marriage when a state law banning such marriages was determined unconstitutional. In a 63 page decision (the first 6-pages of which listed a series of opposing amicus groups that had legal representation in the briefing of the case), the Iowa Supreme Court held that the state law banning gay marriage violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by treating same-sex couples differently than other couples without a sufficient government interest justifying the classification.

The full decision of the Iowa Supreme Court is attached in the link below:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/20090403iowa-text.pdf

The case moved the battle over same-sex marriage from the coastal metropolitan centers of the U.S. to its heartland. To date, only Massachusetts and Vermont allow same sex marriages; California did so for about six-months until that law was repealed by voter initiative in the last election in November.

The case also comes on the heels of an unusual ruling by the Michigan Court of Appeals which allowed a same-sex couple to present evidence to a family court judge relative to the partners/parents parenting time requests once their homosexual relationship terminated following their mutual adoption of three children. That case, itself the subject of an entry in this lawblog, is discussed in the attached article from the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-gayadoption,0,2545662.story