Photo credit: WTXL
Leon County Sheriff's office has announced that there is a new system in place for parents to receive child support payments from another parent who are in custody.
Child support is a payment ordered by a judge to be paid by the parent of a child that does not currently hold custody.
Under the previous system, child support payments were sent to LCSO to be deposited, sent to the Clerk of Courts, which handles all payments for inmates, then deposited to the state, to finally be received by the recipient up to four weeks after the original deposit date.
With the new system in place, LCSO writes a check directly to the state and send the information to the Clerk’s office, where it is then deposited to the recipient. The new process is expected to take less than two weeks.
The idea of a new system comes from a string of complaints that payments were taking too long.
“There were times I would have to borrow money from my parents while waiting for the child support payments from Leon County” said Gadsden County resident, Lisa Gantt.
LCSO Lieutenant Grady Jordan said, “The old way was not an effective and efficient way of doing business, the new way gets the money into the hands of the recipient a lot quicker.”
An inmate who is on child support and has the assets or income to pay child support can be ordered by a judge to still make those payments while incarcerated.
This was the case with Tallahassee resident Keisha Waters. Her child’s father was on child support when he was taken into custody and effectively fired from his job.
“When I found out he was fired as a result of being locked up I was scared because there wasn’t going to be enough money for my baby to eat and survive off just my income.”
Waters eventually found out that her child’s father had rental properties and a judge ruled that she would be entitled to that income as child support for the duration of the inmates’ time in jail.
This new system went into effect on Jan 1.