Deadbeat Profiteers

The Bush Administration, while aware of the complaints, does not seem to want to get involved. (Supportkids' CEO, Casey Hoffman, worked on Bush's transition team.) "If a family chooses to engage a private collection firm, parents ought to have that option, so long as the agreement is clear up front," says Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services. But some critics of the private sector urge the Administration to do more. "Here we have an industry where some of the companies, by almost any measure, are alleged to be doing bad things," says Vicki Turetsky, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of low-income families. "But there's no message coming from the Bush Administration that these practices won't be tolerated." A few states, including Connecticut, have passed laws capping commissions. At the federal level, however, there are no rules governing child-support collection, even though consumer-debt collection has been regulated since the 1970s.

Still, an industry that turns up the heat on others is learning how it feels. Gary Katz, CEO of Child Support Network, the nation's second biggest deadbeat-collection firm, worries that a small number of complaints could endanger what he feels is "a critical option for moms seeking help." He adds that his company brought an array of investigative resources to bear upon Suzanne Simmonds' case and therefore earned its fees. And for the record, his company no longer uses the form letter sent to Simmonds--but not because it contained harsh language. Katz explains, "We stopped using it because it wasn't effective." --With reporting by Deirdre van Dyk