SB 1423 and SB 1424 are a grab bag of changes that endanger federal funding, create lawsuit bait, removes vital protections for children and parents at the Friend of the Court, removes records from public disclosure, expands and promotes local FOC practices that likely violate federal law, and harms both the children and parents for whom the FOC exists and ultimately the FOC and state of Michigan itself.
SB 1423 rewards bad mediation. It eliminates all statutory employment requirements for FOC mediators and guts the requirement for private agency alternative dispute resolution. and makes such mediation mandatory. In effect, the bill codifies mandatory, unregulated, FOC only mediation. In a recent survey, 82% of respondents who met with a mediator felt that he or she did not act with "honesty, integrity, and impartiality" , 85% felt that he or she was not a neutral third party, and 89% of felt that he or she did not facilitate communication between parties to promote settlement (MCR 3.216). These bad mediators are preventing parents from working together to help their children.
SB 1423 endangers federal funding by eliminating references to collecting child support debt via the protections of the Federal Consumer Protection Act. Federal law mandates that these consumer protections remain in place to receive child support program (Title IV-D) funding by saying that they "may not exceed the limit permitted under such section 1673 (b)". [TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER IV > Part D > § 666] Furthermore, these restrictions prevent abuses of justice such as a court which takes 100% of a parent's pay check that he/she has no money left on which to survive. Giving parents the choice between starving or being thrown in jail harms their children, violates their rights, increases chances of suicide or violence, threatens a loss of federal funding, and enables expensive federal civil rights litigation.
SB 1423 places the state's dollars above the welfare of children. It requires that parties must pay for custody investigations. What happens when a protective non-custodial parent of an abused child can't pay? We leave the child to suffer their abusive custodial parent? This is a grave injustice.
SB 1423 places secrecy above justice. It guts Citizen Advisory Committee Requirements, and seals grievance reviews from the public. It strips requirements to collect and publish summaries of grievances, custody recommendations, a law which the SCAO has already failed to obey since 2003. Summaries of custody recommendations show vast statistical differences from county to county, and the legislature and the public should be made aware that a father in Moncalm County is more than 10 times more likely to obtain custody than a father in Wayne County. Justice for children and parents is a serious public policy matter, and the public, as well as the policy makers, need to stay informed.
SB 1423 endangers federal funding, and promoting questionable practices that hurt children by granting local office the power to collect support indefinitely, and appears to violate the Federal 2005 Deficit Reduction Act. Such an arrangement is probably not allowed under US Code Title 42, Chapter 7, IV-D, § 654b. Collection and disbursement of support payments), and if it were, then only if "The State disbursement unit shall use automated procedures, electronic processes, and computer-driven technology to the maximum extent feasible, efficient, and economical". As has been reported via the FRC yahoo group, some local courts are ordering child support debtors to pay their regular support through electronic garnishment, but requiring that they mail in arrears payments to the court. This plainly violates federal law. Why would they do such a thing? To keep arrears payments out of the state disbursement unit? To avoid enforcement of the disbursement rules found in the 2005 Federal Deficit Reduction Act, requiring that support money collected through the program goes to the children first? Instead, it appears that these local courts may be violating federal law by keeping some of the children's money. SB 1423 appears to explicitly violate federal law by requiring that all abatements are applied first to arrearages, when federal law mandates that all payments received be used to support children, saying in part ".. In the case of any other family, the State shall distribute to the family the portion of the amount so collected that remains after withholding any fee pursuant to section 454(6)(B)(ii) ."
SB 1423 creates lawsuit bait, harms kids, and endangers federal funding by removing many reasonable grounds on which support orders may be modified. This violates the federal requirement of expedited administrative and judicial procedures for establishing modifying support obligations. [US Code TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER IV > Part D > § 666]. Due process and access to child support procedures such as modifications is already a federal right under the US Supreme Court ruling Blessing V Freestone, and failure to modify support obligations will likely trigger many federal lawsuits. Furthermore, this will further restrict the ability of parents to get their support corrected when custody changes on the ground. the purpose of child support is to support children, and demanding that a de-facto custodial parent pay a de-facto non-custodial parent a monthly fee, while that de-facto custodial parent is raising his/her children, can only harm those children who don't receive the benefit of the support of both parents.
SB 1423 appears to prevent parents from independently assessing the accuracy of the support calculations, by restricting their access to and determination of the income of the other parent for support calculations, and this prevents them from doing independent calculations to verify that the support was calculated correctly. Today, many local FOC offices substitute a software application which is known to wrongly calculate support obligations, failing to follow Michigan law and act in the best interests of children. It's crucial that parents have full information so that they can make informed decisions about the best interests of their children.
The most egregious provision of SB 1423 is the requirement that parents maintain a single mailing address for the convenience of the court, and the onerous consequence that if the mail is returned, then parties loose their rights to notices and can be fined. As a practical matter, parents going through a divorce will often be forced to move for a few months until they find a new home, making this requirement difficult for many parents. Furthermore, as reported on the FRC yahoo mailing list, many local Friend of the Court offices appear to engage in troubling practices of pretending not to receive documents, repeatedly claiming that documents were "lost" or "never received". If this is true, it will naturally be extended to local FOC offices who will claim to have received returned envelopes, and "lost" them, to allow them to escape their legal obligations to inform "trouble making" parents of their rights. This provision could cause parents to unnecessarily loose access to their children which will trigger endless federal civil rights lawsuits.
SB 1424 also introduces mandatory parenting programs, mandatory drug and alcohol counseling, mandatory anger management therapy, and even mandatory general counseling. Parents in these programs are restrained by the threat that if they do not comply with the orders, or even hints, of their counselor, they may loose their custody battles, the courts will refuse to enforce their parenting time, etc. A person in this situation could be forced to confess to all manner of crimes or personal failings which he or she does not believe. Any statement from a parent under the extreme mental pain and suffering of loosing all access to their child could easily be the result of the inherently coercive atmosphere of the situation, and should never be admitted in a court of law. Like judges, counselors are human and fallible. Parents deserve due process, not mandatory sessions and secret reports. Mandatory counseling should be left to criminals where it belongs. If it must be expanded, then it should only be mandatory when there is clear and convincing evidence that it is required and will be beneficial to the parent and child.
The changes proposed in SB 1423 and SB 1424 are largely identical troubling recommendations from the December 2006 CSPR report from the FOC and SCAO. Those other changes not covered here were previously addressed in a responsive report, and should be similarly rejected. The original report, as well as a detailed responsive report discussing concerns regarding CSPR report are both available at the URLs below.