While you might think that a personal and private issue such as child-support has nothing to do with criminal and legal issues, you need to reconsider your position and pay attention to this situation, especially if you are involved in a child-support issue.
Moreover, this is a serious legal matter and you need to contact a criminal attorney as soon as you get in trouble in a child-support case. For example, recently, a New York man has pleaded guilty to evading $1.2 million in child support payments, after prosecutors noted that he spent more than a decade evading his obligations to his three children by his two former wives, as CNN reports.
In this case, the American judicial system was on Robert Sand’s tracks for more than 10 years, after arrest warrants were issued in 2000 and 2002 because he did not pay the legally required child-support. After Sand left New York for Florida and then fled the country, he was finally arrested last year while trying to enter the Philippines without proper ID, was deported to Los Angeles and taken into custody by U.S. marshals.
Besides the numerous fees and penalties accumulated to the amount of child-support he owes, Sand also faces four years in prison and other penalties for failing to pay child-support and for evading arrest.
Sand was previously listed as the number 1 suspected offender on the “deadbeat parents” website, launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in January 2012 in order to get public help in finding fugitive parents.
This example proves how easily civil court matters can become criminal and how failing to respect a court ruling can lead to criminal charges, major legal issues and even time in jail. To ensure you benefit from the best advice possible when you get involved in this type of legal issues, make sure you get the advice of a specialized criminal attorney and avoid accumulating even more legal charges by evading a court order or fleeing the area.
As you can see, American authorities take very seriously cases related to child-support and parents not respecting the rulings of the court.