By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
The United States should expect parents to support their children. That statement shouldn’t be controversial. Children need food, housing, clothing, school supplies, medical care, safety, and stability. Mothers who are raising children deserve reliable support. Fathers who owe child support should not be excused from their responsibility simply because the obligation is difficult, inconvenient, or old.
Responsibility matters. Accountability matters. But when accountability lacks context, it may just be punishment dressed up as policy.
The U.S. Department of State now states plainly that people who owe more than $2,500 in child support cannot be issued a U.S. passport, and that a valid passport may be revoked. If a passport is revoked, the parent must work through the state where the child support debt is owed, and even after payment, the process through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can take at least two to three weeks. The State Department also notes that someone overseas may only be eligible for a limited-validity passport for direct return to the United States until HHS verifies repayment.
The legal basis is not new. Federal law 42 U.S.C. § 652(k) says that when HHS receives state certification that an individual owes more than $2,500 in child support arrears, HHS transmits that certification to the Secretary of State, who must refuse to issue a passport and may revoke, restrict, or limit a previously issued passport.
What’s new now is the posture of enforcement. According to the Associated Press (AP), the State Department is beginning revocations with approximately 2,700 passport holders who owe $100,000 or more, with plans to expand enforcement to those who owe more than $2,500. The AP also reported that, until now, the penalty was generally triggered when someone applied for or renewed a passport, while the new approach allows proactive revocation based on data from HHS.
For some people, this will sound like common sense. If a person has enough money to travel internationally, the argument goes, he should have enough money to support his child. There are certainly parents who have the ability to pay and refuse to do so. Enforcement tools exist for a reason. A child should not suffer because an adult decides to disappear behind convenience, pride, resentment, or avoidance.
But that’s not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even the most common story.
Noncustodial Parents, Poverty, and Child Support Debt
The child support debt conversation is often carried by the image of the willfully absent father, the man with money in his pocket, a passport in his drawer, and no intention of doing right by his child. That man exists.
However, policy shouldn’t be built only around the worst actor, because when we do that, we often punish the poorest father, the struggling father, the formerly incarcerated father, the unemployed father, the father who wants to pay but cannot find steady work, the father whose order was set beyond his actual ability, and the father who owes money to the state rather than directly to the household raising his child.
The Urban Institute’s “Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation” (a report by Elaine Sorensen, Liliana Sousa, and Simone Schaner) found that most arrears are owed by noncustodial parents with no or low reported incomes. The same report noted that child support arrears had reached $107 billion by September 2007 and that interest on arrears was a primary reason arrears had grown.
A report from the Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN) – “Policies and Programs Affecting Fathers: A State-by-State Report” by Jessica Pearson and Rachel Wildfeuer – puts the matter even more directly: Child support debt had grown to $115 billion by 2020, and 70% of that debt was owed by noncustodial fathers with annual incomes under $10,000. The report also notes that one-fourth of noncustodial fathers are estimated to live in poverty.
This is the part of the conversation that requires compassion, not as softness, but as accuracy.
A father who earns less than $10,000 a year is not refusing a luxury bill. He is living inside an economic emergency. He may be choosing between rent and food, gas and court, work clothes and diapers, child support and survival. If he loses a driver’s license, he may lose a job. If he loses a passport, he loses travel, yes, but perhaps also an employment opportunity, a family obligation, or the ability to repair a life already narrowed by debt.
The FRPN report explains that child support systems were designed around collection from nonresident parents with stable income, yet many current cases involve parents who are unmarried, unemployed, or underemployed. It warns that:
- Orders may be set too high.
- Enforcement techniques can be harsh and ineffective.
- Uncollectible debt can reduce labor force participation, lower child support payment, reduce paternal engagement, and increase conflict between parents.
That’s the paradox. The system can be trying to collect support for a child while weakening the very conditions that make support possible.
Building Fathers’ Capacity to Pay Child Support
Child support must be collected, but if the goal is child well-being, we have to ask a deeper question: What actually increases a father’s ability and willingness to pay?
The research gives us direction. Employment matters. Accurate orders matter. Debt compromise matters. Parenting time matters. Legal rights matter. Human connection matters.
FRPN reports that employment programs for noncustodial parents have demonstrated promise. In Texas, the NCP Choices program increased employment by 21% and the child support collections rate by 47%, relative to the comparison group. Colorado’s Parents to Work program increased employment and earnings and improved the percentage of owed support paid. New York’s Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative showed significant gains in wages, employment, and a 38% increase in child support payments.
These findings should guide us:
- Fathers who can work are more likely to pay.
- Fathers who are supported into employment are more likely to pay.
- Fathers whose orders reflect reality are more likely to pay.
- Fathers who are treated as parents, not merely paychecks, are more likely to stay engaged.
There is also a relationship between parenting time and payment. The FRPN report notes that child support and parenting time are legally distinct, yet studies confirm they are deeply connected and that lack of parenting time contributes to nonpayment. It also notes that studies integrating parenting time into child support processes increased child support payments, increased contact between nonresident parents and children, and reduced conflict between parents.
This aligns with what Fathers Incorporated (FI) has seen in the lives of fathers. In Georgia, the issue is even more complicated because paternity and legitimation are separate. A man can be established as the biological father and still lack legal rights to make decisions, request custody, or secure parenting time unless he completes legitimation. Dr. Chalonda L. Smith’s dissertation, “The Effect of a State Legitimation Process on Child Support Payments and Father-Child Relationships,” found a statistically significant positive relationship between knowledge of legitimation policy and attitudes toward visitation and child support obligations among unmarried fathers in Georgia’s Fatherhood Program.
The Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy brief, “Georgia State Legitimation, Father Engagement and Youth Academic Outcomes,” states that fathers with joint custody and parenting time are more likely to pay child support, while fathers with no custody and no parenting time are least likely to pay.
This isn’t an argument against child support. It is an argument for a smarter child support system.
When a father sees his child, knows his role, understands his rights, has a workable parenting plan, and believes the system recognizes him as more than a debt holder, he is more likely to stay connected. When he is connected, he is more likely to contribute. When he contributes, the child benefits. When the child benefits, the purpose of child support is fulfilled.
That’s why responsible fatherhood programs matter.
FI’s Gentle Warriors Academy (GWA) is built around the realities that many fathers face at the same time: child support, employment, co-parenting conflict, legitimation, parenting time, housing, mental health, incarceration history, and family legal needs. The 2021-2023 FI Impact Report identifies the top services needed by fathers as legitimation, child support, housing, parenting time, family legal support, and employment. It also reports that 643 dads enrolled from 2021 to 2023, more than 400 completed the full primary workshops, more than 355 attended graduations, and the graduating fathers represented more than 1,400 children.
FI’s 2024 Impact Report explains that GWA’s curriculum includes responsible fatherhood, co-parenting, conflict resolution, communication skills, financial empowerment, emotional intelligence, and child development, while also responding to needs such as child support, housing, parenting time, custody, expungement, incarceration issues, and employment.
This is what enforcement alone cannot do. Enforcement can pressure a payment, but it can’t build capacity, heal distrust, or create employment. It can’t teach co-parenting communication, help a father understand the legal difference between paternity and legitimation, or repair a relationship with a child who thinks Dad doesn’t care because the adults never learned how to build a parenting team.
None of this excuses nonpayment. It explains why nonpayment must be addressed with more than penalties.
A passport policy may collect money from some parents who have the means to pay and have chosen not to. That is a legitimate public interest. But when the threshold reaches $2,500, it also sweeps in fathers whose debt may reflect poverty, unemployment, incarceration, interest, court confusion, unrealistic orders, or years of trying to survive below the radar of systems that never fully saw them as fathers.
The question isn’t whether child support should be paid. It should. The better question is whether our policies are designed to produce payment, presence, and child well-being or debt, disconnection, and punishment.
We should enforce support obligations, but we should also:
- Expand payment plans that account for actual income
- Improve order modification access
- Reduce uncollectible state-owed arrears
- Limit the growth of interest
- Protect employment
- Fund fatherhood and workforce programs
- Connect child support proceedings to parenting time when safe and appropriate
- Make legal education available before fathers fall into debt they do not understand and cannot escape.
Children need support. Mothers need support. Fathers need capacity. And families need systems that can distinguish between unwillingness and inability.
The myth says fathers in arrears do not care. The research says many are poor. Our work says many are trying. The policy should be strong enough to require responsibility and wise enough to build the conditions that make responsibility possible.