Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Maryland’s child support system, intended to sustain children, is actually hurting some of the state’s neediest families — especially in Baltimore, an investigation by The Baltimore Sun has found.
Under the dysfunctional system, parents in struggling city neighborhoods owe tens of millions of dollars in back child support — a whopping $33 million in one Northwest Baltimore ZIP code alone.
...Those left to raise the children, most often the mothers, say they are shouldering all the burden, and if they abandoned their children, they would be locked up.
In interviews with more than a dozen mothers, many say providing for a child is not about giving some diapers one day and new sneakers the next. They say kids need consistent emotional and financial support.
“I have to put the system in the middle to make you do your job as a dad,” Nikkia Jefferson-El said outside a Baltimore courtroom, where a judge considered holding her daughter’s father in contempt for not paying his order.
At what cost? For Baltimore’s poorest families, the child support system exacts a heavy price — and it’s hurting whole communities
There are multiple problems with the way that it is set up.
Under the dysfunctional system, parents in struggling city neighborhoods owe tens of millions of dollars in back child support — a whopping $33 million in one Northwest Baltimore ZIP code alone.
...Those left to raise the children, most often the mothers, say they are shouldering all the burden, and if they abandoned their children, they would be locked up.
In interviews with more than a dozen mothers, many say providing for a child is not about giving some diapers one day and new sneakers the next. They say kids need consistent emotional and financial support.
“I have to put the system in the middle to make you do your job as a dad,” Nikkia Jefferson-El said outside a Baltimore courtroom, where a judge considered holding her daughter’s father in contempt for not paying his order.
At what cost? For Baltimore’s poorest families, the child support system exacts a heavy price — and it’s hurting whole communities
There are multiple problems with the way that it is set up.
