Woman Becomes Error-Riddled ‘Deadbeat Dad’ System’s Worst Nightmare

RED HOUSE, W.Va. — The state’s $20-million computer program said Danny Woodall owed $6,000 in back child support. Lisa Woodall’s homemade software proved that the state actually owed her husband money.

She watched helplessly through seven years and six lawyers as her husband was repeatedly hauled into court as a “deadbeat dad.” She knew that he was making payments to his ex because, as a second wife, it was affecting her and her two children.

“There were times when we couldn’t even put food on the table,” she said. “Thank God for my parents.”

Finally, Lisa Woodall, a former bookkeeper, went on the offensive.

The software that she developed debunked OSCAR, the state’s Online Support Collections and Receipts system. It was so successful in her husband’s case that their lawyer suggested she become an expert witness in other cases. Last year she started a company called Support Scrutiny.

“I’ve heard . . . the state hates me,” the 31-year-old said with a mischievous chuckle. “I take that as a compliment.”

Child support collections are an enormous undertaking in the United States. More than $15 billion in support was ordered and almost half went unpaid in 1995, according to the latest figures available from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. More than 6 million one-parent families are due support.

As with anything that size, there are bound to be errors.

But noncustodial parents complain that the problem is not just honest mistakes by agencies. It’s an attitude.

“Their philosophy is, garnish first and ask questions later,” said Dr. Ned Holstein, a Boston physician and president of the nonprofit advocacy group Fathers and Families. “They are provided with powers that go way, way beyond anything that a normal bill-collection agency would have the power to do.

“The problem is that their records are routinely incorrect.”

A 1988 federal law required all states to computerize their collection programs by October 1995. The deadline was extended by two years, but 16 states still had not complied.

Even some states that are online have big problems, observers say.

Vicki Turetsky of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C., represented accused deadbeat dads as a legal services attorney in New Jersey. She says that the state’s figures never matched her own analyses.

“The existing systems are no good,” said Turetsky, who tracks states’ automation efforts.

In November, California terminated a $300-million contract with Lockheed Martin IMS to create a statewide tracking system. Problems included disappearance of data, miscalculation of payments, and inability to communicate with other government agencies to find parents.

Lockheed, which is working with Florida, Maryland and Virginia, expressed disappointment that it could not reach agreement with California on a fix-it plan.

Dianna Thompson, whose e-mail address identifies her as “A2ndwife,” is membership director for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children in Lake Forest, Calif. She says lawyers sometimes advise clients facing such bills, “You might as well pay the interest.

“You may not owe that money, but how much is it going to cost you to prove that you don’t when the agencies themselves won’t sit down and discuss that with you?”

Lisa Woodall wasn’t giving in that easily.

Danny Woodall, 49, who delivers Pepsi products, was paying up to $600 a month in support after his separation in 1989. He worked through bankruptcy and continued making payments. But he said that his daughter and two sons stopped talking with him after years of being told that he was a deadbeat.

“It makes me angry,” said Woodall, looking at the crayon drawings of balloons and a rainbow on a yellowing birthday card that his daughter, Andrea, now 17, sent him while in grade school.

Lisa Woodall gathered her husband’s handwritten receipts, canceled checks and money orders. She plugged the numbers into a homemade spreadsheet on the home computer and checked them against OSCAR printouts.

Even small discrepancies caught her eye. She cites one line where the state rounded a figure up 10 cents. In other cases, the state calculated interest charges from the wrong date, overlooked changes in court orders or simply omitted payments.

She finds “little things that can turn into big things,” said Charles “Rusty” Webb, the Woodalls’ attorney.

Last June, a legislative audit found that almost one-third of the West Virginia Child Support Enforcement Division’s files contained incorrect data. Those errors led the agency to wrongly collect about $1.7 million from 3,788 parents during the 1995-96 fiscal year, the auditors say.

“I will admit we have human error,” said Ann Garcelon, an agency spokeswoman. “That’s one thing that we have not been able to get around, because our office is still staffed by humans.”

Meeting the federal automation mandates required states, in some cases, to transfer information that had been kept on recipe cards in county courthouses, said Joel Bankes, executive director of the National Child Support Enforcement Assn.

“If you take 20 million cases, times however many number of transactions across those cases . . . you’re going to have some errors--system-based or otherwise,” he said, adding that enforcement officials have “a genuine interest . . . to do better.”

To date, Lisa Woodall’s work has been used by six men to argue that they owe less money than the state claimed, or none at all. The cases are pending.

In one, the state said a coal miner client of lawyer Shawn Bayless owed nearly $70,000 in back support. Lisa Woodall figures the state owes him $3,000.

“They get very embarrassed . . . they begin to stammer,” Bayless said of agency officials.

Lisa Woodall said some attorneys like to use her in court for shock value--a woman fighting to lower child support payments. That doesn’t mean she’s anti-feminist.

“Now, don’t get me wrong. It [the collection system] was designed for the guys and the women who are deadbeats,” she said. “But it’s punishing the ones who aren’t.”

She and her husband are slowly recovering from their court battles. They bought a rundown brick ranch house out of foreclosure and are fixing it up. And they’ve purchased a 1994 Jeep to replace the older one they put up for collateral to hire their last attorney.

Lisa Woodall charges a retainer of $400 in child-support and alimony cases. She’s trying to keep it low, because the people she’s helping “are already strapped anyway.”

To her, the clients are like the eight animals wandering her family’s two acres about 45 minutes north of Charleston--a horse, a sheep and other critters rescued from mistreatment or imminent slaughter.

After Lisa Woodall’s work, her husband’s monthly support payment was reduced to $175.

As for the alleged overcharge, the state reworked its figures and acknowledged that it had billed him $1,141.07 too much, as of December. Of course, Lisa Woodall went over the figures.

“It’s incorrect still,” she said. “It’s close to $2,500.”

Lisa Woodall’s Web site is https://members.aol.com/DWood58755/supportscrutinyindex.html