Man jailed for dodging child support for 14 kids

[WriteDown]

Source: AP

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Authorities in Michigan say a man fathered 14 children with 13 different women and owes more than $530,000 in unpaid child support.

The Flint Journal reports 42-year-old Thomas Frazier was jailed Thursday. Court records say he hasn't made a support payment in six years.

The newspaper says the unemployed man could be held for 90 days if he doesn't pay $27,900.

Frazier says he thinks he fathered only three of the children and that it's unrealistic for authorities to expect him to pay child support that was $3,000 a month at one point.

Frazier remains held at the Genesee County Jail. It wasn't immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak for him.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gY4E5OVaqmyhKQxf71h-P7OlIIXwD97GET682

---

This is nuts, but what do you do in a situation like this. Obviously he can't even support a fraction of these kids.

[NC_Nurse]

1. Vasectomy?

Just a thought.

[Igel]

4. Yeah ...

by RPG.

On edit: Was that insensitive? Ah.

[Heddi]

2. Perhaps he should have thought about that

before he commenced fucking. Just a thought.

[No Elephants]

38. Yes, he should have, but he didn't. So, the issue is what now? Do you put

people in jail for failure to pay money when they don't have the money to pay? And what good does it do anyone? Isn't it better to give the man a job and take the money that way?

Charles Dickens opposed debtors' prisons at least as early as 1843.

Sure, we sympathize with the mom or moms of the kids (who also could have taken precautions) and even more with the kids, but, at bottom, this is a monetary debt that the man has no funds to pay. Do we want to go back to some of the harsher ways of Victorian England as to the poor? If so, let's discuss that, because that is the issue, not whether this individual should have kept his trousers zipped.

[Deja Q]

3. Will somebody put a Slap Chop on that guy's nuts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUbWjIKxrrs

He's letting too many people like his nuts...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. They sell castrating knives at the feed store.

Just sayin.

[Thothmes]

52. Don't need a knife

a good strong rubberband will work.

[Stevepol]

5. I think somebody just stumbled on the source of this whole economic downturn.

[elocs]

7. If all men were men and took responsibility for the children they father

it would go a long way to helping their children in need as well as the mothers who struggle to raise them alone. It's guys like this who make me ashamed for my gender. Neuter him.

[Le Taz Hot]

54. And if all women took responsibility

for making a responsible choice as to who fathered their children . . . Let's face it, the fact that this guy has 14 children from 13 different women means that a good 10 of them made a pretty stupid decision. It's the part we NEVER are allowed to talk about on DU. It's women like those 10 that make me ashamed of MY gender.

[Sheepshank]

57. The guy's an ass

how many of those kids has he got custody of? how many of the kids did he decide to raise? He worked the circuit, and walked away smiling at the idea that his genes will be found in perpetuity, and he didn't have any responsibility. He left those women every single time, to figure it out for themselves. Fucking asshole!

[Le Taz Hot]

58. So, picture this scenario,

Man has 10 children by, say 9 different women. Isn't paying child support on any of them. You're saying that mama #10 getting knocked up by SAME father with child #11 has NO responsibility in that decision? Give me a break! I'm so sick of this women as victim mentality I could throw up. I fought long and hard to ensure women could make choices as to how many children they would have and by whom. The assumption was that women would make responsible decisions. This generation spits in the face of ALL of that. And for what? Because THEY can work the circuit -- collecting benefits for them and their children for 18 years. It's LONG past time we deal with this honestly.

[girl gone mad]

70. The guy won't even admit that most of these kids are his.

I seriously doubt he told any of his partners that he was already a father multiple times over. Are women supposed to do full background checks on all potential dates?

[Heidi]

72. The man in question isn't a "potential date." He's someone _13 different women_

had unprotected sex with, without knowing his background. So yes, if you're gonna have unprotected sex with someone, it only makes sense to know at least some basic information about their backgrounds. Should we as women simply trust that a person we don't really know much about is gonna volunteer the fact he has children with 13 different women and that he's not supporting those kids?

[JeanGrey]

71. I TOTALLY agree. What in the world is going through these

women's minds? Are we to believe that NONE of them knew about this jerk?

How sad.

[zazen]

8. really--when is it ethical to demand a vasectomy?

I brought this up on another thread. Is it eugenicist to demand that someone this irresponsible--negligent--abusive--stop procreating? What do we do? It's a slippery slope and can be abused to target minority populations, but clearly this guy, like some in other cultures who have some issue with condoms as somehow demeaning of their masculinity, doesn't get the basics of birth control, or, he sees impregnating women as proof of his pathetically insecure "manhood." What do we do?

I'm just stumped. My personal feelings are to pummel the crap out of him (and more), but that's just a visceral rage at this monster's abuse of male privilege. What does a reasonable, ethical society do?

[harmonicon]

12. it takes two

I don't think that it's exactly someone's god-given right to have children no matter the cost, but he wasn't alone in his baby-making enterprises. You'd hope that somewhere along the line of 13 mothers, one would have cottoned on to the fact that he would have children with them and not be a supportive partner in the relationship.

[LostinVA]

14. A woman can only get pregnant once every year a so -- a man can get many women pregnant in a year

[harmonicon]

16. true enough

however, birth control is the responsibility of both parties every single time.

[LisaL]

No it isn't true. Women aren't just fertile once a year.

[laundry_queen]

26. I think they meant that

once a woman gets pregnant, she's not going to be having any more pregnancies for that 9+ months. Whereas the man can move on to the next fertile woman the next night and get another woman pregnant. Unless a woman is octomom, she's going to be limited to how many kids she can have in her lifetime. A man isn't, so long as he has many willing fertile partners.

[LisaL]

22. Hah? I think you are confusing women with pandas?

[havocmom]

19. ahem, this took 14

He is a cad at best, fucking brat mostly, but he must have some killer pheromones.

[sarah FAILIN]

25. We all need to watch a movie called " Idiocracy"

Stupid people breed like crazy and the intelligent people wait or only have 1 child and before you know it we are over-populated with stupid people that don't know enough to come in from the rain. Maybe we should pay some people to be sterilized. If they will do it willingly for money, that probably says they don't need to breed.

[im1013]

27. You know...

there isn't a day that goes by lately that I don't
look around me and think of that movie.
I'm pretty sure we're already farther down that road than we know!
Scary...isn't it??

:wtf:

[harmonicon]

29. however, that fails to get to the heart of the problem

Yes, stupid people will have more kids than they can take care of, but instead of just letting those children grow up to be like their parents, we could work on having an educational and cultural environment where that wouldn't happen. The human brain is a rather marvelous thing, and I highly doubt that genetics has anything significant to do with what a newborn baby will go on to achieve in adulthood.

As for sterilizing the desperately poor.... umm.... well.... what the fuck is your problem? How about instead, we have a social welfare system which would see to it that no one would ever have to make such a desperate decision?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

31. The nazis really gave eugenics a bad name

Sterilizing fucktards of every ethnicity is just common sense,

[Le Taz Hot]

59. Ride the bus and you'll see this in action.

A couple of weeks ago, a 16-year old mother (I know she was 16 because she revealed such in her very LOUD conversation) with about a one-year-old slapped the little guy in the face when he squirmed too much. I gave her a dirty look and she shouted, "Hey, it's my kid!" Any cockroach can reproduce, but very few of them will actually be parents. It's why the world is so fucked up.

[uppityperson]

34. No, it is not "eugenicist" to make someone to stop continually reproducing.

I do not think that word is the one you want.

Eugenics:
The idea that one can improve the human race by careful selection of those who mate and produce offspring.

So, no. By stopping him from irresponsibly and negligently continuing to reproduce, I don't think we would be trying to improve the human race by controlling who can produce offspring. He already has passed his genes on 14 times.

[No Elephants]

39. Which means he is highly irresponsible and not rich. But mostly not rich, bc

if had the money to support all these kids, the State would make him do that and no one would have a problem with his "excessive" procreation.

If we sterilize people for having more children that they can support, or shirking a legal responsibilty to pay money, where do you draw the line?

And how many unsupported offspring would justify mandatory sterilization? One? Two? Three? Four? Five?

What about women? Much more invasive to operate to tie their tubes than to give a man a vasectomy. Besides, both tubal ligation and vasectomies can be reversed. Not always, but a jerk like this might try and succeed. Why not castration and hysterectomy?

Why stop at sterilization? How about cutting off the hands of people who steal repeatedly, but cannot make restitution?, as the Saudis do Drug addicts and cleptomaniacs? What about compulisve gamblers, who get into debt a LOT?


Seems like a very slippery slope to me.

[uppityperson]

64. My reply was to eugenics, changing race by selective breeding.

Not about how many kids to have. At least that is how I meant my reply.

[varkam]

51. So how many kids are appropriate? eom

[uppityperson]

63. I was discussing eugenics, changing a race by breeding. eom

[varkam]

69. You also said that he was negligent and irresponsible.

So how many children do you figure are appropriate? Where is the line between exercising reasonable care and negligence? Between being responsible and not?

Further, who gets to make that determination?

[riverdeep]

35. Well, I think I have you beat.

I'm starting to think the default should be set at birth that no one can procreate. If you want to have children, apply for a process that reverses the procedure. You'd have to have approval of your community. In this case, the community is almost certainly paying part of the support, they should have some say so. Having children should be a privilege, not a right.

[Historic NY]

9. Put him the Maury Povich Show, they can test his DNA....

http://www.mauryshow.com/

[Deja Q]

10. Not really. Maury is a Republican. Jerry is a Democrat.

Or so each claims; I think both of them just sleaze off of chavs because it's profitable for them to do and people have no qualms watching the circus acts they put in every day. They'll likely never run out of people to keep their one-note shows from ever using other topics either... :(

[dustbunnie]

11. Simple as always. Educate women.

[Faygo Kid]

13. An NBA basketball player? Just kidding. My dad didn't pay a dime in child support.

It's quite a story, but suffice to say Mom worked really hard in a low-paying job to support my brother and me; Dad disappeared (after beating her regularly, which I remember) in 1959. Never saw him after that,until one more shocking contact with him in 1974, then four months later had to identify him on a slab in the Detroit morgue, and that was that.

His wallet had $24, and was filled with pictures of my brother and me from the 1950s.

Not a dime ever spent for Mom and us kids. Bless you, my late Mom.

Fuck you, "Dad."

[UpInArms]

21. ...

:hug:

[Lucky Luciano]

23. Wow...I can kind of feel bad for your dad...the guy must have felt

incredibly guilty about being so selfish that he could not support you. He died penniless, but never let his pictures of you and your brother be far from him. At least you were always in his thoughts even if he took no role in supporting you...of course, the "Fuck You" is still 100% justified.

[riverdeep]

33. Or he kept the pictures in his wallet to pick up women.

Some men will do this thinking the women will be less 'on guard'.

[Lucky Luciano]

55. Really? I thought a potentialmate having kids was a turn off? nt

[Heidi]

73. If so, he was misguided at best. (nt)

[Wwagsthedog]

15. Octo Dad!

[waiting for hope]

17. All this talk about blaming him -

which I can say with absolute certainty that if he is the father of all 14, he needs to pony up. As for the 13 woman, I would have to say they were not the brightest bulbs in the pack - a little history of the man you are sleeping with and perhaps BIRTH CONTROL would be smart way to go but after reading the article, he sounds a bit swarmy.

[ladywnch]

18. you neuter a tom cat, I think this guy qualifies. n/t

[ohio2007]

20. "Frazier, 42, portrays himself as the victim"....I wonder how many kids he really has ?

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2009/04/thomas_frazier_father_of_14_ch.html

[NV Whino]

24. I thought it was Ocotmom's sperm donor.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JeanGrey]

30. Is this Octomom's brother?

[Xithras]

32. A good lawyer could get this tossed

Child support must be based on income. $530,000 into six years means that he was commanded to pay roughly $90,000 a year in child support. It doesn't sound like he was actually making that much money, so the original orders were improperly factoring his income. A decent lawyer could get the orders retroactively amended and fix this.

Remember, paternal child support isn't calculated at $X per kid, it's calculated at a percentage of income per kid. For a guy with five kids by five moms, the support orders for each child should not exceed, at most, 20% of his income. The five together would consume 100% of his income. A judge cannot order a parent to spend 150% of their income on child support, for obvious reasons.

Of course, it doesn't sound like he can afford a decent lawyer either. If he has 13 kids by 12 women, I'm also assuming that he isn't too bright.

[RedRocco]

47. a lawyer cant do anything about arrears

by federal law arrears can not be reduced

[Xithras]

76. That's not completely correct.

A judge cannot arbitrarily or directly reduce the arrears, but it is possible for a judge to find that the original order was improper and set it aside IF it was written based on erroneous data. It would be unconstitutional for the law to require a noncustodial parent to pay arrears on a support order that was written in a way that violated his constitutional rights. If the original findings that led to the orders can be found to be erroneous and flawed, the original order can be overturned. That, in turn, negates the arrears. Federal law prohibits judges from reducing child support arrears directly, but it does nothing (and can do nothing without violating the constituion) about having that original order overturned.

A simple example. Let's say a married father of 1 making $50k a year skips town. Mom files for welfare, so the state sues for support (that's how it works here in California). The judge requests that the fathers last known employer provide his last known income, and the typist mistakenly adds an extra zero, declaring that the father made $500k a year. The judge orders 50% child support (again, illustrative), at a rate of $250k a year or $21000 a month. The father, now living in a grass hut in Maui with his new girlfriend, discovers the order 18 months later when he goes to file his taxes. A call reveals that he's now over $375k in arrears with penalties and interest.

Federal law prohibits the judge from simply setting the arrears aside, but there's nothing stopping the fathers lawyer from petitioning the judge to overturn the original order based on flawed data resulting in an incorrect calculation. If the father can show that his previous income was $50k and not $500k, the order can be recalculated. He would still owe arrears, but instead of $375k, it would be about $37k.

This is largely the same situation as the original post. The judges issuing the child support orders did not have correct information about the fathers actual income levels and pre-existing support options, which resulted in support calculations that he could not possibly pay. While the lawyer cannot request that the arrears be directly reduced, he CAN request that the original orders be overturned because they were based on flawed calculations, and that new orders be issued with numbers in line with his actual income and obligations. He would still owe money, and would probably still be sitting in a cell, but his actual amount owed could be drastically reduced.

[bitchkitty]

36. He should have invested in condoms.

Or had a vasectomy. I'm not sorry this loser is in jail, but I doubt those kids will see any kind of meaningful support from him.

[ima_sinnic]

37. asshole. sterilize him already, fuck his "right" to father children he obviously cares nothing about

[No Elephants]

40. Mandatory sterilization on the basis of poverty, rather than religion, and debtors'

prison. Yeayyyy!

I have never seen anything but RW posts from WriteDown, but I am surprised that he was able to bait the rest of the posters on this thread so easily. If any of you have been complaining about Obama or anyone else not being "progressive" enough for you, maybe you want to re-think some things.

This thread could just as easily have appeared in FREEP, if they cursed less and spellchecked more.

[ima_sinnic]

41. yes, it is very "progressive" to breed like rabbits, with no thought or concern about the outcome,

and absolutely no contribution to the offspring produced. So you are going to make a big contribution to the care of this asshole's unwanted children? Why don't you drive to wherever they are and pitch in as a supporter of irresponsible breeding?

[No Elephants]

42. Kindly point out where I supported

irresponsible breeding. That's like saying objecting to torturing terrorsts equals supporting terrorism.

Do you want to defend the "progressive" nature of mandatory sterilization and/or debtors' prisons for people who cannot afford to support their offspring, or do you just want to pretend that I posted things that I never actually posted?

[ima_sinnic]

44. but you imply that it's "progressive" to allow him to keep breeding, rather than

simply incapacitating him from doing any more. WTF is so terrible about enforcing some limits on someone who had years and multiple, multiple opportunities to do it himself? Is he fucking around BECAUSE he wants to make babies? (and even if so, does he have the inalienable "right" to do that? since when is saddling the taxpayer with unwanted children and creating and abandoning children a "right"?) A vasectomy would be a favor to him and to society. Let him go to court and make his case about how a vasectomy would be "cruel and unusual punishment" or some such bullshit.

[No Elephants]

48. No, I did NOT imply that at all. The fact that you leapt to a conclusion with no

basis for so doing does not mean that I posted it OR implied it. Nor did I post OR imply anything about no limits at all, etc. I addressed only mandatory sterilization and debtor's prison for people who don't have the money to meet their legal obligations.

And you insisted on continuing down that road, despite my prior post.

Again, this is just like claiming that I support terrorism if I object to torturing terrorists. Don't know what part of that you did not understand, but you've keeep building one strawman after another and then arguing with your own creations.

Hope you're having fun with that, but I deal only with what I actually posted, not with what you want to imagine I posted or "implied."

[ohio2007]

43. LOL

...This thread could just as easily have appeared in FREEP, if they cursed less and spellchecked more.

Are you saying some posters only debating points are based on a few choice words or personal attacks ?

[No Elephants]

49. No. I am saying exactly what I posted. Mandatory sterilization for those who have children

without being able to pay for them? Prison for people who cannot pay their monetary obligations? RW is too mild for those positions. So, I suggest that those who say Obama is not progressive enough for them either re-think their views on this thread or re-think their view of Obama.

However, I must confess that I probably should not have mentioned FREEP since I have never actually read there. All I know about it is what I see posted here and what I've seen posted on other board. And sometimes (to my chagrin) someone here posts something that has been posted there.

[ohio2007]

53. "This topic has been moved" ,,,wonder why ?

bc you mentioned that some posters only argument is foul language rather then logical discussion ?

the truth behind the matter must remain out of sight as it is moves toward a stereotypical hot button imo

[PADemD]

45. DNA test the kids and put them on welfare. Then offer

the "Dad" a get out of jail free card for a vasectomy.

[TEmperorHasNoClothes]

46. i thought this was going to be another octomom story....

[acmavm]

56. I think in a way it is. I mean, both had some ego invested in their ability

to propagate, didn't they? Her, it got her all the attention in the world (LITERALLY) and money and a home and etc.

Him, I bet he saw himself as Barney BadAss, the world's biggest stud. There is no way someone would keep impregnating female fuckwits unless he saw this as testimony to what a 'man' he is.

[mbperrin]

50. Poverty is the biggest killer of children's futures and present happiness.

This irresponsible proponent of unfettered reproductive rights has already condemned more than a dozen children to that sentence.

Sterilize him irreversibly, strip him of all parental rights and responsibilities so that the children he is the sperm donor to may enter the social support system without having to worry about him periodically screwing them around emotionally by appearing once a decade as "birthday dad" or "Christmas dad" and being the big hero to young kids who cannot understand that he is the root cause of their poverty and problems.

Creating children also creates the responsibility to care for them. Period. No one here would object to the jailing of anyone who had crippled 14 people in auto accidents. No one here would object to the permanent suspension of their driving rights, either. They would already have created enough pain and suffering to override any "rights" to drive on the public roadways. This is more serious than that.

Get him out of the baby making business. Cut him loose. Release him from his support obligations and take away any parental rights. Children need to be far away from him; we do not need generational transmission of his "values." I'd much rather my tax dollars go to those kids than to either allow him to continue to reproduce in an unfettered way or to have contact with any of those he contributed DNA to. Because he is not a father.

[BreweryYardRat]

75. Yup. If you can't afford to take care of kids, don't have them.

I'm seriously thinking about getting a reversible vasectomy just for safety's sake.

[The Straight Story]

60. He simply chose to have an abortion, male style

:)

[Stevenmarc]

61. It's time for Lorena Bobbitt to come out of retirement.

[mudesi]

62. What's Wrong With These Women?

Seriously. Why did they spread their legs for this loser?

[ecstatic]

65. I wonder if he tells women the truth about how many kids he has

Even if he lowballs the number and says he has 2 or 3 kids, I still wouldn't want to be someone's THIRD or FOURTH "baby mama." Hell, not without a ring and millions of dollars in play.

[cagesoulman]

67. My guess is no

Unless he's got a real masochist on his hands. The kind that think they can "reform" him.

[Subdivisions]

66. Not that I condone him not paying support, but how the hell is he

going to pay it sitting in jail?

I've always wondered that when a father is jailed for not paying child support.

[SoCalDem]

68. Unemployed man has to come up with $27,900..

Gee, what's the likelihood of that happening?

Shame on those 13 women who hooked up with such a loser:grr:

14 people with about 2 synapses firing,..,,.between the lot

[joshcryer]

74. Male choice.

:popcorn:

[Initech]

77. 14 kids? Holy shit!!