Atty. Gen. Jeff Modisett said Thursday that his office is teaming with local prosecutors in a more aggressive push to collect child-support payments from deadbeat parents.
He said his office will help coordinate efforts between local prosecutors and state agencies and start taking steps to have the professional licenses of parents who owe money suspended or revoked.
Those and other measures should result in more interceptions of tax refunds and lottery winnings, more suspensions of drivers and professional licenses, and more liens on property, including automobiles, Modisett said.
“If all that doesn’t work, then we’ll track you down, we’ll arrest you and we’ll put you in jail,” he said.
There are 21,342 people on public assistance who receive child support in Indiana, and of those, 8,517 have court orders seeking payment, Modisett said.
There also are about 187,000 cases of people not on public assistance seeking help in collecting child support, and of those, 113,858 have court orders demanding payment.
The attorney general’s office traditionally has not played a large role in child support collections, a duty that falls mainly on prosecutors in the state’s 92 counties.
