Facing jail time, deadbeat parents seeking lawyers

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina father who was repeatedly jailed after insisting he couldn't make child-support payments of about $50 a week is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end five states' practice of locking up delinquent parents without providing them with a lawyer.

In a case that will be argued before the high court on Wednesday, Michael Turner contends that poor people who are facing time behind bars for missing payments have a constitutional right to an attorney at taxpayer expense. Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio are the other states where deadbeat parents are not automatically given a lawyer in such cases.

By at least one estimate, hundreds of people a year in those states do time for not paying child support - a practice some advocates say penalizes both parent and child.

"It's a heinous situation. Jail just becomes a revolving door. We're locking up the poor," said Michael McCormick, executive director for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. "Child-support lockups are debtors' prisons."

Opponents say that providing lawyers would prove costly and would clog up an already cumbersome legal process and that deadbeats already control their own destinies: If they pay, they go free.

In its ruling against Tucker, the South Carolina Supreme Court said a delinquent dad holds "the keys to his cell because he may end the imprisonment and purge himself of the sentence at any time" by paying at least some of what is owed.

The court also noted that failing to pay child support is an act of civil contempt, not a criminal charge for which the state would have to provide representation. Throwing such people is jail is not meant to punish them but to get them to comply.

Turner, who has worked various jobs in auto repair and construction, claims chronic unemployment prevented him from making payments, landing him in jail three times over the past two years - once for a year, another time for 90 days. He said he believes he could have brokered a compromise if he had had an attorney.

"I'd got a blessing of a deal if I had a lawyer with me," the 34-year-old father said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups are backing him.

"Without a lawyer, the rest of your rights are almost meaningless," said attorney Derek Enderlin, who encountered Turner in jail while meeting with a different client. "You don't know how to challenge the procedures, you don't know how to present evidence, you don't know how to show the court what's actually happened."

Thirteen states have a filed a brief asking the high court to side with South Carolina. They argue that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in the Constitution applies only to criminal cases, and that a ruling in Turner's favor could quickly expand to require lawyers for poor people in a number of other civil proceedings, such as child custody hearings - a costly prospect at a time of big budget deficits.

Judges often use jail as a last resort in child-support cases. A survey by a University of South Carolina law professor found nearly 1,100 of the 8,200 inmates in 21 county jails in South Carolina on one day in 2009 were locked up for not paying child support. Sometimes jail time amounts to only a few hours until a relative or friend can provide enough money to satisfy a judge.

The total amount owed in child support in the U.S. in fiscal year 2009 rose more than $2 billion from the year before to $108 billion, while the amount actually collected fell for the first time since 1975, according to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. Some advocates attribute those trends to the recession.

Delinquent parents get little sympathy from Tammy McArthur. The 43-year-old single mother from Newport News, Va., received only about two years of $60-a-week payments while raising her two children. She said the youngsters' father never faced jail time because authorities struggled to find him. She said she wouldn't have minded if he had ended up behind bars.

"I would like to be the one to close the door," McArthur said.

James McLaren, a family law attorney in South Carolina and vice president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said judges hear hundreds, if not thousands, of child-support cases a year, and "if you were to involve lawyers in that process, you would basically shut down the legal system."

That hasn't been the case in New York. For decades, the state has offered lawyers to poor people facing jail for not paying child support. In New York, 39 percent of parents who owe back child support paid nothing in fiscal year 2009, compared with nearly 47 percent in South Carolina. The national average is 37 percent, according to the Office of Child Support Enforcement.