Law Reaches Abroad to Net Deadbeat Dad

Armed with a new federal law, prosecutors said Monday they have won a $101,200 civil settlement from a man in England who had failed to pay child support to his Ventura County family for nearly four years.

The unidentified man works in the finance and cruise line industries but had not been paying child support for his two children for several years, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Carpenter.

Carpenter said prosecutors threatened to have the U.S. State Department limit, restrict or revoke the man’s passport under the Federal Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996, which takes effect in October, Carpenter said.

The law empowers the secretary of state to limit or refuse to issue passports to deadbeat parents who owe $5,000 or more in back child support, Carpenter said.

“This particular individual has to travel a great deal in his work. It’s important that he can travel any place he needs to go on the globe,” Carpenter said. “Once it became apparent that there would be restrictions placed on his passport, that helped the settlement.”

The man and his family--not identified because the settlement was civil rather than criminal--could not be reached Monday for comment.

The settlement was finalized Aug. 5, when the man wired the first payment of $51,200 from London to a Ventura County government account in a New York bank, Carpenter said. He is to wire the remaining $50,000 to the bank by Feb. 1.

The county is in the process of writing a $51,200 check for the woman and will do the same for the second payment when it arrives, Carpenter said.

Carpenter said the district attorney’s Family Support Division, where officer Colleen Farrell pursued the settlement, first got wind of the man’s unpaid child support debt almost four years ago.

Carpenter said prosecutors probably will not use the Debt Collection Improvement Act often, “but it’s a tool that, when it’s needed, will become invaluable.”

“There was a time in history in the ‘20s and ‘30s when a person was able to cross state lines to avoid child-support payments,” he said. “Now that the world’s become a smaller place, we’re able to reach several thousand miles to enforce the law.”