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Debt Governance, Wealth Management, and the Uneven Burdens of Child Support

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How does the governance of child support amplify economic disparities and enforce racial and gender inequalities in the United States, reflecting broader societal divides in debt and wealth management?

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 22, 2024

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This video discusses a book project by the speaker focused on wealth and inequality, examining both intra-family and inter-family disparities. The speaker has previously studied high-wealth families and their exceptional privileges in managing wealth, particularly in relation to child support obligations. The project seeks to compare high wealth families with lower-income counterparts, exploring mechanisms of child support regulation and how wealth can shield individuals from financial responsibilities.

The speaker highlights examples, such as the case of Cleopatra Cameron—a beneficiary of a trust whose child support obligations were evaded due to favorable legal frameworks for the wealthy, contrasting sharply with the punitive measures faced by low-income parents, especially non-white men. The discussion underscores a racial and economic divide in how child support is enforced, revealing systemic biases that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

The speaker critiques the cultural narrative surrounding "deadbeat dads," which oversimplifies the issue of child support by framing it in moralistic terms. Through this lens, they advocate for a more nuanced understanding of who can pay child support and the various socio-economic barriers that prevent payment. The project aims to reframe discussions about wealth management and child support, calling for policies that truly support families in need rather than perpetuate systemic inequalities.

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Here are five key points from the video you :

1. **Focus on Wealth Inequality**: The speaker's work primarily revolves around analyzing wealth and inequality, particularly the dynamics of wealth within families, how gender influences financial power, and the stark contrasts between high wealth and low-income families.

2. **High Wealth Exceptionalism**: The speaker has studied how ultra-rich families manage their wealth and the unique privileges they receive due to their financial status, particularly in regards to legal frameworks surrounding wealth management and child support.

3. **Divergence in Child Support**: There are significant disparities in how child support laws and enforcement operate for low-income families compared to high wealth families. The speaker highlights mechanisms that allow wealthy individuals to shield their assets from child support obligations while low-income parents face punitive measures for failure to pay.

4. **Racial Disparities in Child Support Enforcement**: The video reveals that the burden of child support debts disproportionately affects non-white individuals, particularly Black men, who are more likely to experience punitive actions such as wage garnishment and incarceration due to child support arrears.

5. **Cultural Narratives and Political Convideo**: The speaker discusses cultural narratives, such as the "deadbeat dad" trope, which perpetuate stigma around non-payment of child support. They critique how these narratives, promoted by political entities, oversimplify complex issues surrounding child support payments and disproportionately affect low-income families.

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Certainly! Here are some key quotes and excerpts from the video you , organized by theme:

### Convideo and Background
- **Wealth Inequality Focus**: “...this has really been about wealth and equality... I’ve written about wealth inequality within families...”
- **High Wealth Exceptionalism**: “...I’ve looked at sort of like elite families... the study of sort of ultra-rich families, how they manage wealth...”

### Wealth Management and Child Support
- **Extreme Wealth Treatment**: “...the scope of the privileges they receive... I know that extreme wealth is only one part of the inequality puzzle...”
- **Child Support Mechanisms**: “...looking at the different mechanisms used to regulate child support for low income families and high wealth families..."

### Anecdotes and Case Studies
- **Cleopatra Cameron**: “...she was receiving about $40,000 a month at the time of her divorce, and she was ordered to pay about $10,000 a month in child support...”
- **Impact of Trusts**: “...the trust said, absolutely not. You know, no way, no how...”

### Racial Disparities in Child Support
- **Disproportionate Impact on Black Men**: “...child support debts are rampant and the burden falls on non-white and particularly black men, who are payers...”
- **Child Support Arrears Statistics**: “70% of arrears are owed by people who either had no reported income or between $1 and $10,000 of reported income annually...”

### Legal and Societal Inequities
- **Imputing Income**: “...courts can...impute income to you... for low income parents... and on the other hand, you do have money, but the court's gonna say you don't...”
- **Pathways to Incarceration**: “...one eighth of South Carolina's inmates were actually in custody because of failure to pay child support...”

### Cultural Narratives and Stigmatization
- **Deadbeat Dad Tropes**: “...the image of the deadbeat dad... a symbol of failure and of moral bankruptcy...”
- **Government Priorities**: “...the money’s gonna go to the state before it goes to the children..."

### Complications of Payment Dynamics
- **Complicated Payment Structures**: “...to think of the story in terms of like, who can pay, who can't pay... it’s more complicated than sort of the story of the deadbeat dad...”

These quotes capture the main ideas of the video, reflecting on wealth inequality, family dynamics, racial disparities, legal frameworks, and cultural perceptions surrounding child support and wealth management.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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Context of the work.

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This is actually part of a book project that I'm working on.

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Um, and it taps into all of my previous work,

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which has really been about wealth and equality.

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Um, and I've written about wealth

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inequality within families.

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So that's a lot of kind

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of looking at the way gender works in families

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and who holds the money in the family.

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Um, but I've also looked at inequality between families, so,

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you know, high wealth families, low income families.

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Um, and what I've really looked at mostly

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previously has been high wealth families.

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And I've looked at sort of like elite families,

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you know, families with a lot of money.

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And I've worked on what I've called

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high wealth exceptionalism.

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So it's really been the study of sort

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of ultra rich families, how they manage wealth,

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how they manage their money,

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and how the rules that we have around wealth

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and wealth management, these rules,

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how they really give them exceptionally

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extremely privileged treatment.

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Um, and right kind of,

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I guess no one's probably surprised at that,

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but I think the scope of, you know, scope

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of the privileges they receive

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and the depth of how, you know,

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how privileged they are really is not always

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something that people know.

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So that's something that I've been interested in.

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And, you know, I know that extreme wealth is only one part

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of the inequality puzzle,

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but I do think it's important to look at inequality from

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above, so to speak.

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Um, but this project has come into being,

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when I started looking at high wealth families in

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conjunction with their lower income counterparts,

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so putting together the two ends of this wealth spectrum.

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So I'll just tell you this little like, anecdote kind of

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how I got to the child support piece.

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And it's interesting because, so, you know,

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I was looking at the, you know, again, polar ends

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of the wealth spectrum and, you know, I think a lot

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of people would think it's very predictable.

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Like there's different treatments,

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and we'll talk about exactly how different it is.

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Um, but I'm also been interested in how the,

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how they're similar and the sort of what I call this sort

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of distorted reflectivity.

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Uh, and so these are like the, you know, like the lists

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or the memes you see, like something that's like, you know,

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quote unquote classy if you're rich

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and quote unquote trashy if you're poor, right?

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Uh, so like day drinking

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or police escorts, having a,

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having a lawyer on speed dial.

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Um, and one of the things

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that's always on the list is getting

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money from the government.

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And something else that I saw on a number

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of these lists was not paying child support.

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And so I started looking into child support

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and I, I, study both family law and inheritance law.

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So, it's of interest to me as a family law scholar.

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I started looking exactly the, you know, sort

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of the different mechanisms used to regulate child support

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for low income families and high wealth families.

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And I knew a little bit about, you know, sort

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of the high wealth families and what happens there.

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And what really it's a story of in

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that context is high wealth trusts,

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an asset protection trust.

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And you know, it's a study in wealth preservation vehicles

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doing exactly what they're supposed to do,

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because what, somebody with a lot

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of money can do is put, money in

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or have, you know, their parents put money in trust

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and then that money can become unavailable to child support.

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Uh, well, children with child support orders.

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It was one of those cases sort of like testing these,

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these trusts and these, these new sort

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of tax haven states in the US

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and people were kinda curious,

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you know, is it gonna work or not?

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Um, so there was a woman whose name was Cleopat Cameron,

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and she was the, granddaughter of a wealthy oil man,

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and she was the beneficiary of a trust

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that her father had created for her.

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And so she was receiving about $40,000 a month at the time

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of her divorce, and she was ordered

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to pay about $10,000 a month in child

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support, and she did not have custody.

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Um, and what the trial court did was they told the, the,

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the, the bank that held the trust, they said, you have

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to pay the child support payments directly to the,

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to the, to the father.

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So right around that time, she took a little trip

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and she went to South Dakota

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and she decided to move her trust to South Dakota.

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And then she asked the South Dakota she court, she said,

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you know, does my trust have to make these payments?

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And the trust said, absolutely not.

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You know, no way, no how,

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and the trust did exactly what it was supposed to do

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by shielding those assets in the trust

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and making them unavailable for child support.

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If you look at the high wealth world

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and high wealth payers, it's sort of,

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blindingly white, right?

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Most of the people in that population, are white.

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Uh, cleopat hammer is actually interesting

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because it's, it's unusual that, well, it's more unusual

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that, a woman is actually paying child support.

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Usually men are paying child support

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because they're not the custodial parent.

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So that's kind of interesting.

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But if we look at the low income side of the spectrum,

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you know, child support debts are rampant

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and the disproportionately fall,

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the burden falls on non-white

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and particularly black men, who are payers.

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Um, and I just,

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I have some few little studies I just pulled out,

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and, you know, they're not surprising, right?

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The low and no income parents are responsible

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for the greatest portion of child support.

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70% of arrears are owed by, people

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who either had no reported income or between $1

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and $10,000 of reported income annually.

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Um, and black fathers are particular overrepresented

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for a lot of reasons, including sort

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of mass incarceration, right?

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Labor market discrimination, like all of the problems

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and obstacles that they face to both earning

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and sort of existing in society without being incarcerated.

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Um, and so that you have a burden, again,

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that's falling on not only low income communities,

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but it's falling in racialized patterns

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that are really harming, again, black

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and also more generally, non-white,

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and men, generally, the way

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that an asset protection trust works is that, you have

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to draft it properly and you have discretionary,

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terms and all of that.

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But with a properly drafted trust, it sort

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of helps at two points during the child support,

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process or lifetime.

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Uh, one is when you're actually just trying to come up with

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what the award is, which is what courts do, right?

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Like, how much are you gonna owe in child support?

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Um, and it's interesting, this is one

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of those interesting things in terms of, you know,

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how it happens with the high wealth

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and the low income people.

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So, courts can, if they choose to,

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do something which is called imputing income,

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like they will impute income to you.

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So for low income parents, if you're not working

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and you're, if you're what, you know,

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courts call voluntarily under

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or unemployed, they'll impute income to you.

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They'll say like, here's what you should be making again,

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you know, sort of like magical thinking, like the best

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of all possible worlds, again,

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without labor market discrimination, without, you know,

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bad economy, whatever, you should be making this.

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And they will award child support based on

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what they think you should be making.

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Um, it's interesting then when you get

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to the high wealth end of things.

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Um, so if you have money in a trust like this,

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you have no present interest in it.

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So you don't actually have like a present property, right,

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in the, in the assets.

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And so when the court is looking at calculating

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how much child support you're gonna

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pay, they don't look at that.

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They don't necessarily look at that.

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It doesn't come into your income

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because it's not part of your income.

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So you have a different kind of magical thinking, right?

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On the one hand is magical thinking,

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whereas you don't have money,

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but the court's gonna say you do, right?

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And on the other hand, you do have money,

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but the court's gonna say you don't.

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So it's kind of, you know,

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and that's just at the very beginning.

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The other part is when it comes to recovering.

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So you know, when the child, is owed money,

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when child support arrears are due,

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it looks a lot different for people with trusts from people

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who have low income.

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And particularly it looks a lot different for,

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those families who are receiving state benefits

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because those are, that's when the government really starts

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to pursue aggressively arrears, but it gets to recovery.

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Uh, you can just take that story I told you about Cleopatra

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Cameron, you know, she moved her trust

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and the, you know, the state court said, nope, you know,

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trust doesn't have to make any direct payments.

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And it's important to note that the, you know,

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the debt doesn't go away.

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The debt still exists in the world.

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So she's still, you know, technically

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and legally obliged to pay it,

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but it does not have to come from

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that trust fund from those sources.

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And then the burden of seeking, you know, enforcement

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and the burden of seeking her payment lies on her

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husband in this case, right?

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The person who's seeking the money.

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And there's really no automatic

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triggers for government action.

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It's just up to this man to decide whether he wants

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to pursue the debt, whether he wants

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to take the time, right?

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Find the lawyers, you know, go through this, you know,

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expensive and timely process to try to sort

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of get her to pay.

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Um, and it looks a lot different if you

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are a low income payer.

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And like I said, especially if you're getting state

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benefits, if you are, you know, like a low income,

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let's say, you know, father, black father very,

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chances are high, of being

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and you are not paying, basically there's a huge range

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of, punitive, mechanisms that the state can use.

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So states will start with like wage garnishment.

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Um, some states will like take away your driver's license,

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which again makes no sense

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because then you can't get to work, right?

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You're like, okay. Um, and also incarceration.

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So when wage garnishment fails,

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and, you know, the driver's license fails, states turn

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to things like civil or criminal contempt of court.

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Um, they make charges of criminal non-support.

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And all of these things come with a threat of imprisonment.

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Um, and I'll give you an example.

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In South Carolina, if the child's custodial household

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receives any kind of public benefits, like

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temporary assistance for needy families

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or something like that, it takes only five days

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of the person who's supposed to be paying

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of the payor parent falling behind

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to trigger a civil contempt hearing.

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And that could mean going to jail for a year.

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Uh, so it's clearly a pathway to incarceration.

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Um, I'll give you one more story.

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We had a story for Cleopatra.

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Um, there's a, the sad story of Walter Scott.

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Uh, in 2015, he was in South Carolina, a black man.

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He was driving a Mercedes-Benz,

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and he was pulled over by the police for a broken taillight.

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Uh, so he ran from the police, he was trying

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to evade arrest, and the officer shot him eight times in the

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back and he killed him.

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Scott had long struggled to pay child support.

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He'd spent time in jail on three separate occasions, due

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to child support arrears, and friends

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and family suggested that at the time of his death,

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you know, he ran from the officer

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because there was a warrant out for his arrest due

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to child support arrears again.

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Um, and the spokesperson for the family at the time,

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after his death, you know, at a press conference, he said,

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look, you know, he had four children.

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He didn't have a violent past

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or any type of, you know, rest for any type of

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anything else other than in child support arrears.

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He had a job, he was engaged.

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Uh, he just had back child support

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and didn't want to go to prison, right?

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And, sort of shockingly, I think at the time

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of this story, one eighth

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of South Carolina's inmates were actually in custody

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because of failure to pay child support.

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So the pathway from, you know, child support, debt

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to incarceration is quite clear.

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And it's just one more, one more way in which right,

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we like create the system of mass incarceration, which

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as we discussed, really, you know, has a substantial

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and un unusually large burden on,

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in this case, you know, black men.

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The project is really thinking about, again,

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these two populations

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and thinking about how families at either end

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of the wealth spectrum manage,

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and use both credit and debt.

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And I think about it in terms

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of like both borrowing, but then also debt.

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So I've given you a little kind of window into debt.

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Uh, but there's also the borrowing piece of it, sort

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of the flip side of the coin, right?

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Um, often people think of borrowing, you know,

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as disconnected from the debt,

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but obviously there, there are two parts of the same thing.

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So just the terms on which people borrow.

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Um, you know, and that gets into things like payday lending

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and all of these sort of, what we call fringe, you know,

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lending boutiques, and how low income, families

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and individuals borrow heavily from

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these type of payday lenders.

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Um, whereas high wealth, individuals, right?

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They actually do borrow, they borrow from their own set

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of fringe lenders.

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They're just, you know, trust boutique, you know,

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boutique trust firms or offshore, you know,

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financial institutions.

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Um, they borrow, right?

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So that they don't have, they borrow,

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they do securities backed lending.

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They don't have to sell anything, they don't have

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to pay any capital gains, right?

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They live off of this, you know, borrowed income.

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They don't have any income tax

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'cause they don't make any income, right?

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And then they just keep passing the wealth down.

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So kind of differences in how people borrow, differences in

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how debt affects the families.

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And then a little bit about sort of

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how this happens across the map,

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what the geography of this looks like.

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Um, so where payday lenders are located versus where these,

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you know, these like, you know, offshore

328
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or now onshore, right?

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These, like these, boutique trust firms,

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are located, you know, now they're in Wyoming

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and South Dakota and Alaska and you know, Delaware,

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and they're, all of these states are competing with the

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offshore financial centers for business.

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And, you know, they all call themselves sort

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of like the new onshore offshore, right?

336
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So all of these, you know, again,

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it's a very geographical thing in the sense of none

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of these are what we consider

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to be like mainstream banking, right?

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It's all on the, on the, on the fringe ends.

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Um, so there's a geography to it.

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And then I also like talk a little bit about the cultural

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narratives that support these type of programs and policies.

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And especially with child support.

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One of the things which I think, you know,

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people probably have in their mind is the image

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of the deadbeat dad, which is something that really,

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you know, was propo was invented by, and then circulated

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and propounded by American politicians, starting

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with Reagan, seeing the father

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who couldn't pay child support as the, you know,

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this really symbol of failure

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and of moral, you know, moral, you know, bankruptcy.

354
00:13:25.995 --> 00:13:28.165
Yeah, moral bankruptcy, exactly. Great word.

355
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So the ability to, you know, to, to support these types of,

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programs, again, this type of legal framework through,

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creating blame, you know, the Dead V Dat came

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around at the same time about as the welfare queen,

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which everyone is very familiar with as a highly racialized

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and, you know, morally charged trope.

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And the same thing with the deadbeat dead.

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And, you know, and this is not to say that, you know,

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in all, in all the circumstances, if things, you know,

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as people can, they should be

365
00:13:56.125 --> 00:13:57.365
supporting their children, obviously.

366
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Um, but I think what's interesting when you look at the ways

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that child support is governed, especially

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for these low income, payers,

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it just doesn't even seem like they are,

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the policies are in place to help children, right?

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Who, are a family receiving benefits

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and, you know, child support's due, the money's gonna go

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to the state before it goes to the children, right?

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Like, the children aren't gonna see the money.

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You're actually like reimbursing the state.

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I think about it's a huge number, a huge percentage

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of child support arrears is actually owed to the government

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as opposed to being owed to the children.

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So I just think it's interesting to look at it, you know,

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there's the, again, you think of a deadbeat debt

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and you think of somebody who's, you know,

382
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got all the money in the bank

383
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and like, just isn't paying, right?

384
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But to make it a little more complicated, to think

385
00:14:41.925 --> 00:14:45.205
of the story in terms of like, who can pay, who can't pay,

386
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you know, maybe somebody's not paying

387
00:14:46.525 --> 00:14:48.565
because they're incarcerated and they can't work, right?

388
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Maybe somebody's paying, you know, not

389
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Paying because, you know, various circumstances.

390
00:14:53.895 --> 00:14:55.965
Maybe somebody's not paying because they have all this money

391
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and trust and they should be paying.

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So there's a lot of dis it's more complicated than sort

393
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of the story of the deadbeat dad,

394
00:15:00.925 --> 00:15:03.005
but it's, that's a story that gets a lot of attention.

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00:15:03.945 --> 00:15:05.885
And again, it's obviously a gendered, you know,

396
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a gendered figure and, and I think often erased figure.

397
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Um, and it really gets the attention of people without,

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00:15:12.875 --> 00:15:16.645
without, without making people go into sort

399
00:15:16.645 --> 00:15:18.925
of the more complicated parts of like, who can pay

400
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and who's getting the money,

401
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and how do we actually help families,

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which I think should be the ultimate, you know, question.

Exploring Wealth Inequality: A Study of Family Dynamics and Child Support

00:00:00 - Context of the work. This is actually part of a book project that I'm working on. and it taps into all of my previous work, which has really been about wealth and equality. and I've written about wealth inequality within families. So that's a lot of kind of looking at the way gender works in families and who holds the money in the family. but I've also looked at inequality between families, so, you know, high wealth families, low income families. and what I've really looked at mostly previously has been high wealth families. And I've looked at sort of like elite families,

00:00:33 - And I've worked on what I've called high wealth exceptionalism. So it's really been the study of sort of ultra rich families, how they manage wealth, how they manage their money, and how the rules that we have around wealth and wealth management, these rules, how they really give them exceptionally extremely privileged treatment. and right kind of, I guess no one's probably surprised at that, but I think the scope of, you know, scope of the privileges they receive and the depth of how, you know,

00:01:04 - something that people know. So that's something that I've been interested in. And, you know, I know that extreme wealth is only one part of the inequality puzzle, but I do think it's important to look at inequality from above, so to speak. but this project has come into being, when I started looking at high wealth families in conjunction with their lower income counterparts, so putting together the two ends of this wealth spectrum. So I'll just tell you this little like, anecdote kind of how I got to the child support piece.

Contrasting Wealth Perspectives: Child Support and Class

00:01:34 - I was looking at the, you know, again, polar ends of the wealth spectrum and, you know, I think a lot of people would think it's very predictable. Like there's different treatments, and we'll talk about exactly how different it is. but I'm also been interested in how the, how they're similar and the sort of what I call this sort of distorted reflectivity. and so these are like the, you know, like the lists or the memes you see, like something that's like, you know, quote unquote classy if you're rich and quote unquote trashy if you're poor, right? so like day drinking or police escorts, having a,

00:02:07 - and one of the things that's always on the list is getting money from the government. And something else that I saw on a number of these lists was not paying child support. And so I started looking into child support and I, I, study both family law and inheritance law. So, it's of interest to me as a family law scholar. I started looking exactly the, you know, sort of the different mechanisms used to regulate child support for low income families and high wealth families. And I knew a little bit about, you know, sort of the high wealth families and what happens there.

00:02:40 - that context is high wealth trusts, an asset protection trust. And you know, it's a study in wealth preservation vehicles doing exactly what they're supposed to do, because what, somebody with a lot of money can do is put, money in or have, you know, their parents put money in trust and then that money can become unavailable to child support. well, children with child support orders. It was one of those cases sort of like testing these, these trusts and these, these new sort of tax haven states in the US

Trusts and Child Support: Disparities in Wealth and Racial Impact

00:03:11 - you know, is it gonna work or not? so there was a woman whose name was Cleopat Cameron, and she was the, granddaughter of a wealthy oil man, and she was the beneficiary of a trust that her father had created for her. And so she was receiving about $40,000 a month at the time of her divorce, and she was ordered to pay about $10,000 a month in child support, and she did not have custody. and what the trial court did was they told the, the, the, the bank that held the trust, they said, you have to pay the child support payments directly to the,

00:03:42 - So right around that time, she took a little trip and she went to South Dakota and she decided to move her trust to South Dakota. And then she asked the South Dakota she court, she said, you know, does my trust have to make these payments? And the trust said, absolutely not. You know, no way, no how, and the trust did exactly what it was supposed to do by shielding those assets in the trust and making them unavailable for child support. If you look at the high wealth world and high wealth payers, it's sort of, blindingly white, right? Most of the people in that population, are white.

00:04:15 - because it's, it's unusual that, well, it's more unusual that, a woman is actually paying child support. Usually men are paying child support because they're not the custodial parent. So that's kind of interesting. But if we look at the low income side of the spectrum, you know, child support debts are rampant and the disproportionately fall, the burden falls on non-white and particularly black men, who are payers. and I just, I have some few little studies I just pulled out, and, you know, they're not surprising, right?

Racial Disparities in Child Support Arrears and Legal Frameworks

00:04:47 - for the greatest portion of child support. 70% of arrears are owed by, people who either had no reported income or between $1 and $10,000 of reported income annually. and black fathers are particular overrepresented for a lot of reasons, including sort of mass incarceration, right? Labor market discrimination, like all of the problems and obstacles that they face to both earning and sort of existing in society without being incarcerated. and so that you have a burden, again,

00:05:20 - but it's falling in racialized patterns that are really harming, again, black and also more generally, non-white, and men, generally, the way that an asset protection trust works is that, you have to draft it properly and you have discretionary, terms and all of that. But with a properly drafted trust, it sort of helps at two points during the child support, process or lifetime. one is when you're actually just trying to come up with what the award is, which is what courts do, right?

00:05:50 - and it's interesting, this is one of those interesting things in terms of, you know, how it happens with the high wealth and the low income people. So, courts can, if they choose to, do something which is called imputing income, like they will impute income to you. So for low income parents, if you're not working and you're, if you're what, you know, courts call voluntarily under or unemployed, they'll impute income to you. They'll say like, here's what you should be making again, you know, sort of like magical thinking, like the best

Disparities in Child Support: Wealth, Trusts, and Legal Perceptions

00:06:19 - without labor market discrimination, without, you know, bad economy, whatever, you should be making this. And they will award child support based on what they think you should be making. it's interesting then when you get to the high wealth end of things. so if you have money in a trust like this, you have no present interest in it. So you don't actually have like a present property, right, in the, in the assets. And so when the court is looking at calculating how much child support you're gonna pay, they don't look at that. They don't necessarily look at that. It doesn't come into your income

00:06:50 - So you have a different kind of magical thinking, right? On the one hand is magical thinking, whereas you don't have money, but the court's gonna say you do, right? And on the other hand, you do have money, but the court's gonna say you don't. So it's kind of, you know, and that's just at the very beginning. The other part is when it comes to recovering. So you know, when the child, is owed money, when child support arrears are due, it looks a lot different for people with trusts from people who have low income. And particularly it looks a lot different for,

00:07:22 - because those are, that's when the government really starts to pursue aggressively arrears, but it gets to recovery. you can just take that story I told you about Cleopatra Cameron, you know, she moved her trust and the, you know, the state court said, nope, you know, trust doesn't have to make any direct payments. And it's important to note that the, you know, the debt doesn't go away. The debt still exists in the world. So she's still, you know, technically and legally obliged to pay it, but it does not have to come from that trust fund from those sources.

Unequal Burdens in Child Support Enforcement

00:07:53 - and the burden of seeking her payment lies on her husband in this case, right? The person who's seeking the money. And there's really no automatic triggers for government action. It's just up to this man to decide whether he wants to pursue the debt, whether he wants to take the time, right? Find the lawyers, you know, go through this, you know, expensive and timely process to try to sort of get her to pay. and it looks a lot different if you are a low income payer. And like I said, especially if you're getting state

00:08:23 - let's say, you know, father, black father very, chances are high, of being and you are not paying, basically there's a huge range of, punitive, mechanisms that the state can use. So states will start with like wage garnishment. some states will like take away your driver's license, which again makes no sense because then you can't get to work, right? You're like, okay. and also incarceration. So when wage garnishment fails,

00:08:54 - to things like civil or criminal contempt of court. they make charges of criminal non-support. And all of these things come with a threat of imprisonment. and I'll give you an example. In South Carolina, if the child's custodial household receives any kind of public benefits, like temporary assistance for needy families or something like that, it takes only five days of the person who's supposed to be paying of the payor parent falling behind to trigger a civil contempt hearing.

Child Support Arrears and Pathways to Incarceration

00:09:24 - so it's clearly a pathway to incarceration. I'll give you one more story. We had a story for Cleopatra. there's a, the sad story of Walter Scott. in 2015, he was in South Carolina, a black man. He was driving a Mercedes-Benz, and he was pulled over by the police for a broken taillight. so he ran from the police, he was trying to evade arrest, and the officer shot him eight times in the back and he killed him. Scott had long struggled to pay child support.

00:09:55 - to child support arrears, and friends and family suggested that at the time of his death, you know, he ran from the officer because there was a warrant out for his arrest due to child support arrears again. and the spokesperson for the family at the time, after his death, you know, at a press conference, he said, look, you know, he had four children. He didn't have a violent past or any type of, you know, rest for any type of anything else other than in child support arrears. He had a job, he was engaged. he just had back child support and didn't want to go to prison, right?

00:10:27 - of this story, one eighth of South Carolina's inmates were actually in custody because of failure to pay child support. So the pathway from, you know, child support, debt to incarceration is quite clear. And it's just one more, one more way in which right, we like create the system of mass incarceration, which as we discussed, really, you know, has a substantial and un unusually large burden on, in this case, you know, black men. The project is really thinking about, again,

Borrowing and Debt Across Wealth Spectrums

00:10:55 - and thinking about how families at either end of the wealth spectrum manage, and use both credit and debt. And I think about it in terms of like both borrowing, but then also debt. So I've given you a little kind of window into debt. but there's also the borrowing piece of it, sort of the flip side of the coin, right? often people think of borrowing, you know, as disconnected from the debt, but obviously there, there are two parts of the same thing. So just the terms on which people borrow. you know, and that gets into things like payday lending

00:11:28 - lending boutiques, and how low income, families and individuals borrow heavily from these type of payday lenders. whereas high wealth, individuals, right? They actually do borrow, they borrow from their own set of fringe lenders. They're just, you know, trust boutique, you know, boutique trust firms or offshore, you know, financial institutions. they borrow, right? So that they don't have, they borrow, they do securities backed lending. They don't have to sell anything, they don't have

00:11:57 - They live off of this, you know, borrowed income. They don't have any income tax 'cause they don't make any income, right? And then they just keep passing the wealth down. So kind of differences in how people borrow, differences in how debt affects the families. And then a little bit about sort of how this happens across the map, what the geography of this looks like. so where payday lenders are located versus where these, you know, these like, you know, offshore or now onshore, right? These, like these, boutique trust firms,

Geography of Wealth and the 'Deadbeat Dad' Narrative

00:12:28 - and South Dakota and Alaska and you know, Delaware, and they're, all of these states are competing with the offshore financial centers for business. And, you know, they all call themselves sort of like the new onshore offshore, right? So all of these, you know, again, it's a very geographical thing in the sense of none of these are what we consider to be like mainstream banking, right? It's all on the, on the, on the fringe ends. so there's a geography to it. And then I also like talk a little bit about the cultural narratives that support these type of programs and policies.

00:13:00 - One of the things which I think, you know, people probably have in their mind is the image of the deadbeat dad, which is something that really, you know, was propo was invented by, and then circulated and propounded by American politicians, starting with Reagan, seeing the father who couldn't pay child support as the, you know, this really symbol of failure and of moral, you know, moral, you know, bankruptcy. Yeah, moral bankruptcy, exactly. Great word. So the ability to, you know, to, to support these types of,

00:13:36 - creating blame, you know, the Dead V Dat came around at the same time about as the welfare queen, which everyone is very familiar with as a highly racialized and, you know, morally charged trope. And the same thing with the deadbeat dead. And, you know, and this is not to say that, you know, in all, in all the circumstances, if things, you know, as people can, they should be supporting their children, obviously. but I think what's interesting when you look at the ways that child support is governed, especially

Child Support Policies and Their Impact on Families

00:14:05 - it just doesn't even seem like they are, the policies are in place to help children, right? Who, are a family receiving benefits and, you know, child support's due, the money's gonna go to the state before it goes to the children, right? Like, the children aren't gonna see the money. You're actually like reimbursing the state. I think about it's a huge number, a huge percentage of child support arrears is actually owed to the government as opposed to being owed to the children. So I just think it's interesting to look at it, you know,

00:14:35 - and you think of somebody who's, you know, got all the money in the bank and like, just isn't paying, right? But to make it a little more complicated, to think of the story in terms of like, who can pay, who can't pay, you know, maybe somebody's not paying because they're incarcerated and they can't work, right? Maybe somebody's paying, you know, not Paying because, you know, various circumstances. Maybe somebody's not paying because they have all this money and trust and they should be paying. So there's a lot of dis it's more complicated than sort of the story of the deadbeat dad, but it's, that's a story that gets a lot of attention.

00:15:21 - a gendered figure and, and I think often erased figure. and it really gets the attention of people without, without, without making people go into sort of the more complicated parts of like, who can pay and who's getting the money, and how do we actually help families, which I think should be the ultimate, you know, question.

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