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Comment by jcoffland | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this situation is very real for you but you exaggerate a little. Most men do not end up in jail for failing to make child support payments. Child support enforcement is a long drawn out process.

Edit: But I could be wrong. I found several anecdotal articles about this subject on the NY Times and elsewhere. Here's a more informative article on the topic http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-support-an...

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I didn't say most men. I said thousands in my state. And, the problem is worse than you know. For every man jailed for non-payment of support there are (anecdotally) probably 50 or so desperately struggling to meet their support obligations AND find time to have an impactful presence in their children's lives. I can tell you from personal experience and those of my friends that these struggles are met with indifference by the Courts and Legislators. Worse, the struggle is used as leverage by non-support paying spouses to control and alienate. Until you live it its impossible to understand how inequitable the process is.

So what's your solution? Let the fathers off the hook?

I don't think anyone here has such intentions. I'd refrain from using excluded-middle fallacies at HN.

I don't think it's an exaggeration. In some areas its not permanent jail, you just go to jail on weekends. However, the structure of justifying best efforts to pay child support exists in a world of dad jobs. You can't get letters from Uber stating you gave it a good effort X many days this week. Getting an attorney costs money, if you had money I am sure it would go to child support. Additionally, it is not easy to take time off most jobs to attend court hearings. It also does not reflect well if you ask your employer for time to attend such hearings.

That's still jail - so no I don't think it's an exaggeration. It's also functionally debtors prison and totally insane.

Anecdote: I've talked to a couple people who were in jail locally (in the US). Their experience was that "most" of the people in jail with them were in for DUI or child support. "Most" can probably be thought of as "enough to notice."

Of course they didn't survey professionally, yadda yadda.

Of course most men don't end up in jail for anything at all, ever, but it's a common enough experience to notice.

Disclaimer: I'm divorced, paid child support for 15 years, and was nervous all the way to the last payment.

What kind of jail were they in? That is going to affect the population. If they were in minimum security or small town jails, then it seems perfectly natural that most would be DUI and Child Support because others would go to different institutions.

Yes, it was county/city jail. And yes, that's where they would "naturally" go, but many of the child support cases probably don't need to be in jail. Some do, some don't, the ratio is debatable.

They most definitely end up in jail: "Former Saint Robert Meachem jailed for unpaid child support, alimony"

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/02/robert_meachem_i...

Most vs too many can be separate things.

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