Family Responsibility Office FRO CHILD SUPPORT PROBLEMS Continue
Ombudsman says he gets too many complaints about Family
Responsibility Office
Andre Marin says system has improved but 'over $200,000 not
going to needy parents'
The Canadian Press, July 28, 2015
Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin took aim at the Family
Responsibility Office and the justice system in his annual
report that came out Tuesday.
The Ontario agency responsible for
enforcing court-ordered child and spousal support
payments has been singled
out again by the ombudsman because of a growing
number of complaints.
There were 1,167 complaints about the Family
Responsibility Office in 2014-15, a slight increase over
the previous year but up considerably from 794
complaints two years ago, ombudsman Andre Marin said in
his annual report Tuesday.
There's "a new wrinkle" that saw 350 people denied a
total of $845,000 in family payments they were
entitled to because they had also been receiving
welfare or disability support and then moved off the
social assistance program, added Marin.
"These are people with children who should be getting
that money -- didn't get that money, and again this year
we're looking at 274 (families) totalling $214,000," he
said. "Improved, but still over $200,000 not going to
needy parents."
There are also serious problems in cases where the
person paying support or the recipients live outside
Ontario, something the ombudsman raised in previous
reports, and there are ongoing problems with mistakes by
staff at the FRO.
No support payments for year
The report cites the case of one woman who
complained she stopped getting support payments for
more than a year, and couldn't get anyone at the
agency to call her back. It took Marin's staff
more than half a year to get her the $10,000 she was
owed.
"We raised the issue with senior FRO staff, and more than seven months after the problem was identified, it
finally acknowledged that the case worker had wrongly
determined that the woman was no longer entitled to
support," wrote Marin.
Sheila McKinnon, of Courtice, Ont., told The Canadian
Press she's had problems with FRO for years because her
ex-husband doesn't inform the agency when he changes
jobs, and it won't impose fines or penalties to force
him to comply.
"FRO has told me they have no way of making him
disclose his employer so they can garnish his
wages," McKinnon said in an email.
The agency wrote her in April explaining why it won't
fine her ex-husband for not disclosing where he's
working.
"FRO made the decision to focus our efforts on
collecting court ordered support obligations rather
than exercising the offences provision under our
legislation for a number of reasons," wrote Carolyn
Calwell, assistant deputy minister of Community and
Social Services. "The most compelling reason is that
any fines paid upon conviction do not benefit the
support recipient."
Marin, who hopes to be reappointed for a third,
five-year term, admitted he made mistakes in May with a
social media campaign urging his 31,700 Twitter
followers to pressure Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberals
to keep him as ombudsman. He had retweeted dozens of
posts from supporters, including one that accused the
Liberals of turning Ontario into a "banana republic" and
another saying Wynne is "more corrupt" than FIFA,
soccer's scandal-plagued governing body.
"Things were happening fast that night, and the more
you're on Twitter, it's like a highway, you can have
fender benders," he said.
Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The truth is, many can't. And, tragically,
some are driven to desperate measures, including suicide.
In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that
"not all fathers are deadbeats." Jim hanged himself because he couldn't
see any alternative. Even now, his children are unaware of the
circumstances of their father's death. Meeno Meijer, National Post
George Roulier is fighting to regain money wrongfully taken from his
wages by the Ontario child-support collection agency. Chris Bolin,
National Post Alan Heinz, a Toronto firefighter, has gone bankrupt
fighting for the return of his daughter, 3, from Germany. No one will
help him, but German authorities are trying to collect child support
from him.
Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the
'deadbeat dad,' the schmuck who'd rather drive a sports car than support
his kids. Because I write about family matters, I'm regularly inundated
with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It's not
news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their
ex-spouses. What I'm interested in is whether the system assists people
during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery.
From the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on
the prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers' stories
are of a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most
divorced dads pay their child support. Among those who don't, a small
percentage wilfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven't been told is that the other men in arrears are too
impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have
been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of
bureaucratic foul-ups.
Read More ..
EDMONTON -- An Edmonton judge has decided a divorced dad has to make child support payments, even though
the child isn't his. Justin Sumner had an on-again-off-again relationship with the woman he eventually
married, Dawn Sumner.
She already had a child from a previous relationship with a man named Rob Duncan, and as she and Justin
broke up and reunited, Dawn was sexually involved with both men.
When she found she was pregnant, she called Justin, who recognized there was a possibility that Duncan was
the father, but later concluded he was the dad.
Andrew T. Renouf committed suicide on or about October 17, 1995 because he had 100% of his wages taken by the Family Responsibility Office, a child support collection agency of the Government of Ontario, Canada.
He asked for assistance for food and shelter from the welfare office and was refused because he had a job, even though all of his wages were taken by the Family Responsibility Office.
Andy was a loving father that hadn't seen his daughter in 4 years.
A memorial service was held in October, 1998, for Andy in front of the Family Responsibility Office at 1201 Wilson Avenue, West Tower, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is in the Ministry of Transportation grounds in the Keele St. & Hwy 401 area. All members of the Ontario Legislature were invited by personal letter faxed to their offices. Not one turned up. The Director of the Family Responsibility Office and his entire staff were invited to the brief service. The Director refused and wouldn't let the staff attend the service although it was scheduled for lunch time. There was a peaceful demonstration by followed by a very touching service by The Reverend Alan Stewart. The text of the service will soon be able to be read below.
The service made the TV evening news.
It was Andy's last wish that his story be told to all. YOU CAN READ HIS SUICIDE NOTE
Payers and recipients do not have direct
access to their assigned enforcement services officer
"There is only limited access to enforcement
staff because many calls to the Office do not get through or are terminated before they
can be answered."
"The Office is reviewing and working on only
about 20% to 25% of its total cases in any
given year."
"At the end of our audit in April 2010, there
were approximately 91,000 bring-forward
notes outstanding, each of which is supposed
to trigger specific action on a case within one
month. The status of almost one-third of the
outstanding bring-forward notes was "open,"
indicating either that the notes had been
read but not acted upon, or that they had not
been read at all, meaning that the underlying
nature and urgency of the issues that led to
these notes in the first place was not known.
In addition, many of the notes were between
one and two years old."
"For ongoing cases, the Office took almost
four months from the time the case went into
arrears before taking its first enforcement
action. For newly registered cases that went
straight into arrears, the delay was seven
months from the time the court order was
issued."
Read the shocking report by The Auditor General of Ontario Report on the
Family Responsibility Office
TORONTO - Ontario's controversial Family Responsibility Office
has been overbilling 1,700 parents, mostly fathers, for as long
as 13 years, the province admitted Friday.
The 1,700 parents were overbilled by an average $75 each month,
after the agency wrongly applied a cost of living adjustment
that was eliminated in 1997.
Those who were overpaid will not be forced to give the money
back.
Instead, taxpayers will foot the $5.3 million bill for the
agency's mistake.
"This error's been found and it's being corrected," said Liberal
cabinet minister John Milloy. "We're going to be reaching out to
those individuals (who were overbilled) and talking to them
about their situation, formally alerting them."
The Family Responsibility Office, or FRO, is responsible for
ensuring court-ordered child support payments are made. Read More ..
than 97 per cent of all payers overseen by the office are male.
Milloy said the agency discovered the problem at some point in
2011. No one will be fired for the mistakes, he added.
"I see this as something very serious," he said in an interview.
"I'm not trying to minimize it, but … there's been lots of
action taken to reform FRO, to update computer systems, to
update customer relations and it's on a much firmer footing."
The billing mistake is only the latest controversy to engulf
FRO.
"Canada's national newspaper for professional women"
On June 9, 2005 the McGuinty government announced the passage of Bill 155, legislation that promised to increase
enforcement, improve fairness and enhance efficiency at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).
However, the legislation did not address the problem of accountability and, as things now stand, the FRO is a threat to every
Canadian affected by a government regulated support and custody arrangement system. Think of George Orwell's 1984
and you'll have a good picture of how issues are handled at the FRO.
They have legal power to extort money from Canadians, but are not responsible or accountable for their actions.
Last year an FRO staff member decided not to wait for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work
truck driver and took it upon themselves to suspend his license because he was, understandably, behind on his
payments, having lost his job earlier in the year. Although he was looking for work, the FRO cut off the only way he
knew of to earn a living. His suicide note explained how he'd lost all hope. Is this what we want FRO to be doing?
Read More ..
