Private company uses new lending law to help children

AUSTIN (November 25, 1997) - A constitutional amendment allowing home equity lending in Texas will be a key tool for a private Austin company in the collection of unpaid child support.

When the amendment takes effect January 1, Supportkids.com, the largest private child support enforcement company working on behalf of custodial parents in the United States, will be able to use the new loan option to help Texas children. It has been common practice in all other 49 states for unpaid child support to be repaid by home equity loans.

“This is great news for the children of Texas,” said Casey Hoffman, Supportkids president. “Now non-custodial parents who owe child support can no longer hide behind their homesteads and build up home equity on the backs of their kids.”

Home equity loans have been used to pay child support arrearages in scores of cases handled by Supportkids enforcement specialists. In one Oklahoma case, a father who had failed to pay child support was able to secure $15,000 through a home equity loan on his mother’s house. The loan enabled the father to completely settle his back child support obligation to his two children.

Hoffman pointed out that the passage of the home equity lending provision is the latest constitutional amendment that will result in financial benefit for Texas children. Texas voters in 1983 approved a constitutional amendment allowing wage garnishment of earnings of noncustodial parents who owe child support.

These orders, formerly implemented after lengthy court hearings, have become administrative in nature and are another powerful tool in the collection of child support.

Supportkids, founded in 1991, receives 15,000 calls a month from custodial parents seeking assistance in collecting child support. Supportkids locates more than 90 percent of noncustodial parents. The company has helped thousands of parents and children collect child support that in some cases has been owed for more than ten years.

Hoffman is an attorney and former special assistant to the attorney general who was in charge of the child support enforcement program in Texas from 1986 to 1990.

“If real estate is owned by a parent who has abandoned his children - but he has not abandoned his property - Supportkids will be at their doorstep,” Hoffman said.

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