Deadbeat Parents Face a Miserable Day in Court

Hell on Earth for Los Angeles County’s deadbeat dads is in Civil Courts West.

The fathers--and a few mothers--have been summoned by the court to this building near downtown Los Angeles for failure to pay child support. They stand in the halls or in the packed waiting room; groping through a huge, overworked bureaucracy takes time.

In their hands are the court’s summonses and other papers. Some carry briefcases or shopping bags full of well-worn receipts, bills and documents--crumpled paperwork that they insist will prove they don’t owe the money.

Every day of the working week, nearly 200 of these cases from every part of Los Angeles County are heard in three tiny courtrooms here. Soon, a fourth courtroom will open, as the daily caseload rises to an expected 300. The increase, officials said, is due largely to a recent state law requiring the revocation of nonpaying parents’ driver’s licenses.

In a few more months, as welfare reform kicks in and abandoned mothers, forced off the aid rolls, chase even more absent fathers, officials expect to hear 400 cases a day in this stuffy, noisy, confusing place.

Almost to a man and woman, the defendants who come here are lower-working-class people; some are worse off. Few have lawyers. Many struggle to comprehend the instructions on the several pages of forms handed them and fill them out in barely legible writing. Finally, angry, confused and usually guilty, they offer their excuses to a judge who has heard every alibi in the book.

*

I was invited to the courthouse by Art Goldberg, a lawyer who usually represents working people from Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood. He sometimes is appointed and paid by the court to defend parents entitled to an attorney but too poor to hire one.

Goldberg, a Free Speech Movement leader at Berkeley, still believes in the ‘60s, and approaches his daily tasks with a left-wing social consciousness you don’t see much any more. Nor does he follow “L.A. Law” rules of fashion or status. On the day I visited him, the right leg of his inexpensive pants was accidentally tucked into a white sock and he was driving an old, battered, litter-filled Geo that belongs to one of his own children.

“Don’t tell me you have any sympathy for people who won’t support their children,” I said. Absolutely not, Goldberg replied. “I have four kids,” he said. “Everyone should support their children.” Even so, he insisted that some people were getting a bum deal in the bureaucracy at Civil Courts West.

We took the elevator up to the 16th floor of the building--a glass-sheathed structure that housed an insurance company before big business fled the Wilshire district--and headed into the district attorney’s office.

The operation here is part of Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s effort to collect approximately $2 billion a year in unpaid child support owed to approximately 700,000 children. It is financed largely by Washington as part of a huge federal campaign against deadbeat dads.

Goldberg introduced me to the deputy D.A. in charge of the Civil Courts West operation, John Davis, and his colleague Wendy Weisler. It was 8:30 a.m., but they and the other prosecutors already were overwhelmed by the day’s caseload.

Goldberg and the D.A.s were friendly to each other. They have to be. There’s too much work to permit the procedural hassles provoked by both sides of the criminal courts bar--and by the high-priced brand of family law attorney. “The only reason the system works is because most of the D.A.s are so nice,” Goldberg said.

Nearby, a line was growing. The people were waiting for free advice from a system Goldberg and some of the other defense lawyers set up with the court’s approval. To help the confused crowds in the hallways, a defense attorney, working pro bono, answers questions and guides people to the proper offices each morning. Otherwise, there would be total confusion--and probably gridlock--in the hallways.

This morning, it was Goldberg’s turn and he walked down the line, getting a rundown on each problem. Some of the people didn’t strike me as particularly forthright.

Goldberg asked one man what he did for a living. “I work,” the man replied. Where? At a company. What company? A big company. How much do you make. Maybe $500, maybe $150. It depends.

But one story sounded true. A man said his 18-year-old son, a high school graduate, was no longer eligible for child support. He had the documents to prove it. But he was still being billed by the court. Goldberg steered him to a deputy D.A. who cleared it up in five minutes.

At noon, Goldberg left for a while. He had received a court appointment to represent a woman and was taking her back to his office. She looked around the battered, littered Geo and asked Goldberg suspiciously, “Are you a lawyer?”

*

As we parted, I told Goldberg I wasn’t going to write a sob story about these fathers. As far as I was concerned, if they had supported their kids, they wouldn’t have had this trouble. Same with the mothers.

But I conceded Goldberg’s point, when he said the system is a mess. We are packing too many people in too small a space in Civil Courts West. There are too few people there to help them. We give them two small restrooms, one for men, one for women. There is no place but the hallway floor for kids to play.

Let the government press the deadbeats for the money they owe their children, and press them relentlessly. But don’t subject them to inhumane conditions, the kind of conditions that drive people crazy.