The Indiana Judicial Center has a blog for providing legislative updates. For example, on January 12, they posted an update on Family & Juvenile Law. I’m just going to paste the whole entry to give you a look at what kind of information it provides:
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard SB 17, introduced by Sen. Steele, which would create an interim study committee on Title IV-D and child support. The bill calls for the first meeting of the interim committee in June, in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of Indiana’s Support Enforcement Association. Sen. Steele also offered an amendment, which would require representation of Title IV-D prosecutors on the existing Child Custody and Support Advisory Committee. The Committee discussed: a case where the payee of child support was changed without notice to the support obligor, the jurisdiction of Title IV-D courts, use of administrative law judges, the interrelationship between child support and parenting time, contempt in child support cases, and use of Title IV-D in paternity cases. Sen. Bray assigned the bill to a committee with Sen. Steele, Chair, Sen. Ford, and Sen. Lanane to get the bill into final form and bring it back to the Committee next week.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also heard SB 12, concerning legal separation. Its author, Sen. Steele, reported a problem concerning the start of the one-year period of legal separation. Committee members amended the proposed legislation to provide the one-year period of legal separation should begin when a separation agreement is filed, if the court does not issue an order and there is not a contested hearing. The bill passed as amended 8-0.
It would appear that Indiana – like a lot of other states – is finally starting to get more focused on how to bring in more federal revenue by capitalizing on the further destruction of families.
States like Michigan, Texas, and whole slew of others have been doing this now for years… Welcome aboard!
You can expect Indiana’s economy to decline and jobless rate to skyrocket – but hey, maybe the increase in federal IV-D child support funding will make up for those losses…
I’m going to bet that it won’t though.
Something needs to be done about the national IV-D child support enforcement program – and soon. It’s literally paying the states to further destroy families in crisis instead of helping them – and it uses welfare money from Social Security to do it.
If you’re at all concerned with this and want to know more about how it all works – get in touch with me at the address below.
Ken Rosebriar
kenrosebriar@comcast.net