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For deadbeat dads, dilemma boils down to dough or deer

Chicago Tribune

When Rachel Miller got a child-support check for more than $14,000 last fall, she never would have guessed that the long-awaited money had appeared because her sons’ father likes to hunt white-tailed deer.

Illinois had refused to renew his hunting license as part of a new program that gives deadbeat dads an ultimatum: Pay up now or give up your right to hunt and fish.

“I thought someone was pulling a joke on me,” Miller said. “I thought, ‘It’s a little late for April Fools -- not funny.’ ”

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Matching up hunting licenses with computerized lists of parents behind on their payments is the state’s latest way of using technology to address the long-standing problem of child-support collection.

In the six months the program has been in effect, Illinois has collected nearly $130,000 from 90 parents who each owed at least $1,000 in child support and needed to make good to be allowed to fish or hunt. Another 88 parents decided to forego the licenses rather than pay up.

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich vowed to improve on Illinois’ ranking as among the nation’s worst states at child-support collection when he took office in 2003. Last year, the state collected a record $1.2 billion in payments. But officials said that parents, mostly mothers, still were owed $3.2 billion in back child support.

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The hunting license crackdown is merely one tool in the state’s arsenal aimed at forcing parents to pay what they owe for their children. A program launched several years ago withholds professional licenses, such as medical and accounting licenses, from parents behind in their child support. In January, the state started suspending driver’s licenses of deadbeat parents, whose names also are cross-checked when a lottery winner tries to collect.

Illinois is trying to duplicate the success of other states, where people have shelled out enormous sums to preserve their right to hunt. In Maine, one hunter paid $30,000 in back child support after being selected in an annual lottery for one of 3,000 coveted licenses to hunt that state’s majestic moose.

Michael DeBrito, Miller’s ex-boyfriend, hadn’t made a child-support payment for his teenage sons, Anthony and Michael, since 2005, according to court documents and state officials. Miller had about given up hope.

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“I had paid more in lawyers’ fees than I had ever collected,” she said. “It was costing too much money to try and collect a little bit of money.” Then DeBrito sought to renew his hunting license last year.

For the first time in the 22 years he has been hunting white-tailed deer, DeBrito said, he was denied.

Instead, he was given a phone number.

He blamed a paperwork mistake for Miller not receiving child-support payments. But Ruth Igoe, a spokeswoman for Healthcare and Family Services, said the state was not aware of any paperwork issues. She said DeBrito paid overdue child support in October.

According to court files, DeBrito used a worker’s compensation settlement to pay $14,187 of what he owed and is back on track with a $125-per-week plan.

Miller, who has married and is also the mother of an 8-year-old daughter, used part of the money to expand the small kitchen that serves as a family room.

DeBrito, who eventually did get a new hunting license, isn’t happy about the way things worked out. “I don’t agree with a lot of things they did with fishing and hunting licenses,” he said. “The way the state works now, they’re in control of way too many things.”

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But some hunting organizations disagree.

“We think the program is good if the intent is to collect child support due to dependent minors,” said Jered Shofner, president of United Bowhunters of Illinois. “If that’s what they have to do to track them down, it’s a good thing.”

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