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Comment by vijayr | Hacker News Reader

Anita, scared and broke, puts down the name of a long-ago boyfriend and a phony address. When Boyfriend doesn’t show up in court (because how could he? He was never notified) an automatic default judgment is entered and he is on the hook for 18 years of child support.

Woah, this happens??? This doesn't sound logical or sensible in any shape or form. How can there be a "automatic default judgement" if he wasn't even notified? What is stopping the girl from giving some/any guy's name and address in this case?

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> This doesn't sound logical or sensible in any shape or form. How can there be a "automatic default judgement" if he wasn't even notified?

There usually can't be; a default judgement generally requires that a person be properly (usually, personally) served; in certain cases public notice (which servces as legal notice to the subject) can serve in lieu of service of process.

And, in any case, a default judgment can be set aside for a wide variety of reasons, including, among others, misrepresentation or fraud by the party applying for the default judgment.

Yep. But you will still find people to swear that we live in a "Patriarchy" :)

Haha, did Anita downvote me?

how is this not considered fraud?

As with many things, it is if you can show it in court. Which requires the time and money to fight it in court which costs time and money. And as we already know based on similar abuses of the lower class, that means it isn't an avenue of resolution for those without such resources.

But to make it even worse than the average case of 'yeah it is wrong but you aren't rich enough to fight it', by the time you are notified there is an issue that needs fighting you are facing a huge bill that, if it isn't paid, can result in loss of driver's license (good luck keeping a job) if not imprisonment (good luck fighting in a court while in prison).

Nothing.

> Woah, this happens???

Why are you surprised? Middle-to-low income men are not represented by any powerful lobby or movement (because that would be branded misogynistic and/or racist).

Want more surprises? Compare what US companies are allowed to put into food to their EU counterparts.

> Middle-to-low income men are not represented by any powerful lobby or movement (because that would be branded misogynistic and/or racist).

Lots of things that would be (and are!) labeled misogynistic and/or racist are represented by powerful lobbies and movements, so the logic there doesn't follow. It may be that middle-to-low income men are not represented by any powerful lobby or movement, but if so, the reason you offer is not the reason why.

(The reason why is probably that middle-to-low income men don't, as a class, necessarily have lots of free money to devote to political causes, and, to extent that people in that class do devote money to such causes, they don't do so around their identity as "middle-to-low income men".)

Very good point.

Single mothers are a growing group, they now represent 1 in 4 households. They are a very important group to win elections. For example, single mothers were the single largest voting bloc for Obama. A lot of campaign strategies are designed around winning the single mother votes, "the war on women" rhetoric for example. It's not surprising to see laws designed to coddle them and cater to them.

As this article points out, this is very shortsighted since for one single mother who gets "free child support" it's a whole family who has to suffer, but people are slow to make the connection.

> Middle-to-low income men are not represented by any powerful lobby or movement (because that would be branded misogynistic and/or racist)

I see class and sex. What exactly is the race angle?

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