When Ronnell Hampton was growing up, his father wrote a $600 check every month to pay his child support.
But only $50 of that amount actually made it to Hampton’s family; the rest was sent back to the government to repay the cost of public assistance.
The family could have used the extra cash, Hampton said. He recalled days with the electricity turned off, selling candy and pumping gas to make ends meet, and school outings he couldn’t go to because they didn’t have enough money.
…“Once it becomes a debt owed to the government, that money never gets sent to the child,” says Jessica Bartholow, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, which co-sponsored the bills. “It’s kind of the original sin of the child support system we have in place today, which is, how do we call it a child support system where none of that money goes back to the child?”
