WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Deadbeat dads: Pay your child support, or wind up in a newspaper ad.
Westchester County, N.Y., bought a quarter-page ad labeled "Deadbeat Dads" in the New York Post this week. The ad reads: "Do you know where these deadbeat dads are? Their children don't."
"We are turning up the pressure on these deadbeats," said County Executive Andy Spano. "We have many ways of making them pay -- suspending their driver's licenses, garnishing their pay, even arresting them -- but we hope that this latest method will shame them, and others who see the ad into doing the right thing."
The first ad in the paper features four deadbeat fathers who owe a total of $192,576 for their six children.
The county hopes the four major child support debtors are shamed into paying, or at least officials can find out where they are. It's the county's latest move in the crackdown on absent parents. Photos and information on them and eight other deadbeats, including a mother, can also be found on the county’s Web site.
The county said the men owe between $34,000 and $63,000 each. The ex-wife of a man who owes $63,000 said he may have fled the country but she hopes his friends will see the ad and speak to him.
One of Westchester County's largest child support offenders is a woman -- she owes $68,000.
"Making sure that parents take financial responsibility for their children is a major issue because it not only affects the lives of these children, but society as a whole,’" said Spano. "When parents don’t pay child support, families are forced to go on public assistance and the taxpayer ends up taking on that responsibility."
Westchester County Social Services Commissioner Kevin Mahon said that the Office of Child Support Enforcement currently has 16,872 open cases. About 40 percent of these families are on public assistance, and 60 percent are not.
The 12 people featured on the Web site owe a total of $412,840, but that is only a fraction of the amount actually owed. DSS estimates that if all the back payments that were owed were ultimately collected, it would total $144 million.
Anyone with any information on the deadbeat parents featured should call 914-813-6378 or e-mail csewebwestchester@dfa.state.ny.us.
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