No justice.

[MrScorpio]

All because of a clerical error, by the way

Clerical Error In Child Support Payments Leads To Six-Month Jail Sentence For Clifford Hall (VIDEO)

Due to a clerical error, Texas father Clifford Hall received a bill charging him nearly $3,000 in overdue child support last year. Hall quickly repaid the amount, even paying an additional $1,000 to balance his debt. But despite his repayment, Hall was sentenced to six months in jail. He and his attorney Tyesha Elam joined host Nancy Redd to share his story on HuffPost Live.

Errors in the automated child support withdrawal amounts from Hall's paycheck caused a payment shortage, but when Hall discovered this imbalance, he worked to pay it immediately.

Elam explained, "I assumed as soon as he brought me the receipt catching him up as well as the letter advising him of the overpayment, I thought, 'oh this one will be easy.' I'm thinking, 'let me let the opposing counsel know and we'll be done with this matter.'"

"But the opposing counsel informed me that she wasn't willing to settle the case. She wanted $3,500 in attorney's fees and she was confident from this judge that she could get it. So she refused to settle. So we had to move forward."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/child-support-error_n_4637465.html

[Nye Bevan]

1. Snopes is your friend.

Nonetheless, Judge Lisa Millard found Hall in contempt of court and sentenced him to 180 days in county jail for some combination of his failure to pay required child support on time, his failure to follow the court's scheduled visitation times with his son, and/or his walking out of the courtroom in the middle of a hearing. (News accounts at the time were murky about which of these factors was the basis for his sentence.)

However, available court records indicate that Hall was straightforwardly held in contempt of court for failure to pay child support in a case which had a motion for contempt dating back to April 2013 (and a court document briefly glimpsed in the Houston television news report about the case shown above displays a header indicating Hall was indeed held in contempt for "for failure to pay child support&quot . The information presented in news accounts indicating that Hall owed nearly $3,000 in back child support, and that the child's mother had incurred $3,000 in attorney's fees trying enforce their court agreement, suggested that this was an long-running and/or ongoing support issue rather than a sudden and recent one.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/childsupport.asp

Stiffed his ex on $3000 of child support, forced her to pay $3000 of attorney's fees in trying to get him to pay, refused to follow the court visitation schedule, and then walked out of court in the middle of a hearing.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Yup. GMTA. I was looking for a non HuffPost (they suck) source for this and I found the Snopes.

And looking at the link in the OP, it's also from January.

A search of news for anything recent turned up nothing.

I hate the Internet for what they do, plenty of sites still carry the story without correction or retraction.

[MrScorpio]

3. Thanks, I'm glad that it clarified this point:

Even the most sympathetic explanation, offered by Hall's lawyer, doesn't claim that Hall was sent to jail for "overpaying" child support. Rather, his lawyer maintains that his child support payments were not made on time due to a clerical error, and a recent change in Texas law meant that those who fell behind in their payments (for whatever reason) could not avoid jail time by retroactively getting their accounts up to date:

His falling behind was not even due to his own transgression but, rather, was caused by a clerical error in his paycheck by his employer. The payments were supposed to come out of his check automatically, but it was discovered that the payments were being withdrawn only sporadically. Hall racked up an impressive bill that forced him to pay almost $3,000 in past-due payments.

The problem, as [his lawyer, Tyesha Elam] explained, lies in a law passed back in June 2013 that repeals protections for parents paying child support who may fall behind. Before, if you paid in full after falling behind, there was usually no problem. However, after the statute was passed, that all changed. The law, in Elam's view, was designed to target deadbeats who willfully fell behind and used the protections to their benefit. Now, however, it catches all parents with late payments in its dragnet.

After exhausting his appeals options, Clifford Hall eventually spent eight days in the Harris County Jail and was released on 2 July 2014. Hall may have suffered an injustice, but nothing in the information presented about this case other than catchy headlines and sensationalized re-reporting of the original story supported the interpretation that Clifford Hall was "sentenced for paying too much child support." Others sources reported, more accurately, that Hall was jailed "for failing to pay child support, even though [by the time he was sentenced] he was fully paid up."

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/childsupport.asp#PZWGWZTyDeZJiohj.99

[NYC_SKP]

4. The Huffington Post link in your OP is from January. I hate them as a source.

And the reason that I even did a Google search was to promote your story using original sources, which are more reliable and which deserve the traffic.

Then I couldn't find any legitimate sources.

I urge all DU members who find huffington post linked stories to find original sources, they are usually attributed IN the huffpost articles.

So now I think it's our duty to find the truth.

Did he have to pay penalties, were any legal fees or fines reimbursed?

All we have is confusion, I'd love to have the truth. I don't doubt that he was a victim of the system, just not sure how.

[Nye Bevan]

5. You're welcome.

I guess the message is that if you put your ex through hell, refuse to pay child support and build up huge arrears, force her to spend thousands in attorneys fees, disregard the court-imposed visitation schedule, and disrespect the court by walking out mid-hearing, you won't necessarily escape any consequences by cutting a check at the last minute and saying "Look, I'm fully paid up!" Even if you benevolently tack on a little extra.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Then perhaps you should self-delete,

rather than continuing to perpetuate an inaccurate story.