Cutting Edge Solutions...

Old Style Service And Values

Attorneys Vic Hill and Brad MacDonald

Georgia man arrested for 30-year failure to pay child support

He probably should have just stayed in Georgia.

While driving in Wisconsin on his first trip back to the state in more than three decades, a 70-year-old Georgia man was stopped by a local police officer for a few minor traffic offenses. When the officer searched the man’s record, however, he found sufficient cause for an arrest: an outstanding warrant for unpaid child support, issued in Milwaukee County in 1975.

According to the officer, he stopped the man’s vehicle after noticing that he was driving without tail lights and that his car had a loud exhaust. And it could have ended there, due to a clerical error on the date of the original child support warrant. “They used typewriters back then,” the officer later told a reporter.

However, the officer eventually determined that the man was still wanted for his failure to pay child support more than 35 years ago, and arrested him.

The man, who had traveled to Wisconsin from Jonesboro, Georgia, was arrested and held over the weekend in a Wisconsin county jail before posting bond on Monday morning. He will soon appear in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on the child support warrant, when the details surrounding the original child support warrant may become available. It is not known whether he also received a traffic ticket.

While this case is clearly an extreme one, it is not dissimilar from the many warrants for unpaid child support that are issued in Georgia every year. If you have received such a warrant, or if you need help compelling the other parent of your child to pay child support, it may be in your best interest to contact a skilled family law attorney and discuss your rights and options.

Source: Reuters, “Man arrested in Wisconsin on 36-year-old child support warrant,” John Rondy, Dec. 12, 2011