Indiana County Just Realizing it Needs to Collect $1m in Child Support Docket Fees

Today in Almost No One Wins news, we turn to Jackson County, Indiana. The county has hired a collection agency, Eagle Accounts Group, to collect unpaid child support docket fees.

When newly elected County Clerk Amanda Lowery took office back in January, an audit revealed close to $1 million in unpaid child support docket fees dating back to 1999. The charges, according to Lowery, were assessed to pay for processing child support payments.

So, Lowery is not a winner because she’s left looking like the bad guy since she’s the one responsible for the push to collect these over due fees.

Around 3,800 residents are responsible for the $978,000 bill. None of those folks win, either, since according to Lowery, “There’s no obligation on the clerk’s part to notify people that a fee is due.” So relying on the “I honestly didn’t know about this” excuse is worth about $0.00 in this scenario. Regardless of if they knew or didn’t, they’re still responsible for those fees.

What isn’t working in those residents’ favor is the fact that some child support payers seemed to have it together enough to pay the fee. If everyone in Jackson County had not paid the child support docket fee, things might have turned out differently for the county.

Eagle Accounts Group, interestingly enough, may be the closest thing we have to a winner — unusual in these kinds of stories. In the news piece linked to above (from Indiana’s WAVE-3, “Working for You“) is just doing what it was hired to do. If you watch the video (and you should watch the video, if only for the moment where Lowery looks out into the middle distance before saying, “I don’t think you can hold Jackson County responsible” for late fees that have gone uncollected for over a decade^*) no one, from Troubleshooter Eric Flack to the two men interviewed who had received collections letters, seems to hold the collection agency responsible at all. Any ire is directed squarely at a county infrustructure that seems in need of a serious overhaul.

As one of the men says, “I hate to say I just think there is a lot of incompetence in our county government.”

The assumed collections rate on these past due accounts is roughly 10 percent. This means that, for the amount of ill-will generated by Jackson County’s move, they’ll only pull in at most around $120,000. Yet, with a county budget of only $9 million, it’s not like $120,000 is pocket change.

^* My other favorite moments in the video are all Troubleshooter Eric Flack-related. From his title to his first appearance chilling on a park bench like it’s Mayberry — like, maybe he could just sit there all day talking with other townspeople like Schmitty or Duke about the cost of a shave and a haircut or he could get the Troubleshooter Signal and race off to…troubleshoot? I guess? This fantasy about the private life of Eric Flack sort of got away from me, but the point is: he’s awesome and on his way to being the Bob Woodward of Child Support Docket Fees.