This is part of the first installment of "Cheating the Children: A look at the Texas Child Support System," a two-day series running in The Monitor.

The logic is simple.

You bring a child into this world.

You help bring that child up.

But for 1.2 million Texas parents, something is lost in the equation.

Last year, the state’s attorney general’s office forcibly collected more than $2 billion in unpaid child support from mothers and fathers who, for whatever reason, failed to meet financial obligations to their children.

Of those cases, 36,000 originated in Hidalgo and Starr counties, where more than 30 percent of court-ordered payments went unheeded.

Ask how this could happen, and it seems everyone has an answer:

From mothers who say the state isn’t doing enough to punish their children’s “deadbeat dads,” to overworked caseworkers who promise they are doing all they can.

There are fathers who accuse the court of discrimination and judges who argue justice knows no gender in family court.

Today, The Monitor kicks off a two-day series on the gargantuan statewide child support system and the thousands of Rio Grande Valley families working their way through it. Texas’ system is unlike any in the country — the largest operated under an elected official’s purview, and a criminal prosecutor’s no less.

Some parents have exerted great effort to right the wrongs parental separation has brought upon their children. Others have found themselves in jail and even statewide infamy.

But when all the talking is done and the last argument made, there’s only one interested party whose stake in this fight truly matters — the children.

“Every single case is important to us,” said Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office on child support issues. “We know children need this money."

LAW AND ORDER

In Texas, those that dodge child support payments face some of the toughest penalties in the nation.

Evaders can lose driver’s licenses and passports, have their assets seized and even find themselves behind bars.

Last year, The National Child Support Enforcement Association recognized Texas for doing a better job collecting child support than any other state — a remarkable feat considering that just 25 years ago less than 40 percent of noncustodial parents in the state made regular payments, according to the organization.

At the time, former Attorney General Jim Mattox had just thrust his office into the child support business. The issue had become a political football tossed to score points near elections and often fumbled when it came time to follow through, said Lynda Benson, head of the Texas chapter of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support.

Under Mattox’s successor — Dan Morales — the situation only got worse, prompting state legislators to threaten removing child support enforcement from the attorney general’s office in favor of a more neutral government agency. Around that time the phrase “deadbeat dad” was coined in the state’s campaign to collect child support.

“They like to show they’re tough on evaders,” Benson said. “But when it comes to making those men and women pay up, the effort isn’t always there.”

Attorneys general John Cornyn and Greg Abbott, however, made child support a top priority throughout the last decade, aided by improvements to automated tracking systems that keep tabs on debts owed by scofflaw parents. Today, 64 percent of Texas parents pay their child support regularly under court-ordered schedule, according to the attorney general’s office.

Still, some cases continue to fall through the cracks.

Former Houston resident Michael Madden may be the only Texas father to appear on the state’s Top 10 evader list more than once. Police arrested him twice after extended lapses in his child support payments from 1996 to today.

Each time, the 52-year-old truck driver paid the amount required to get out of jail and then high-tailed it out of the state. His last-known address is in New Mexico.

“They take one payment from him, and he leaves again. I don’t understand it,” said his ex-wife Mona Boyer, who is now raising their two children alone in Freeport, south of Houston.

Madden now owes them close to $50,000 in payments dating back to the couple’s divorce, while Boyer relies on Social Security disability checks and Medicare to cover her children’s health-care needs.

“I don’t see why they keep letting him do this to us,” she said. “They know he’s going to leave. Their records show that.”

‘SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE’

Part of the problem lies with overworked investigators and collection clerks who face caseloads that far exceed their time and ability, reformers like Benson say.

The situation is likely to deteriorate over the next two years, when federal and state cuts threaten to strip budgets for Texas’ child support offices in half.

“Something needs to be done,” she said. “There’s still $9 billion in unpaid support out there, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Those on the other side of the law, however, say the state’s “lock ‘em up” attitude toward nonpaying parents can only go so far to pull the money in.

Fathers with every intention of paying sometimes lose the ability to do so because of a lost job or injury that prevents them from working, said McAllen family law attorney David Cantu.

And in Hidalgo County — where almost 30 percent of the workforce toils for less than $20,000 a year — many work seasonal jobs that makes employment a dangerously transitory matter.

Fewer than 5 percent of non-custodial parents who suffer a substantial drop in income can successfully convince a judge to reduce child support payments, according to the non-partisan Urban Institute. And some non-custodial parents don’t even know they can go back to court to ask for lower payments if they lose a job.

The longer those payments keep accruing interest, the more quickly they can snowball into massive debt.

“Sometimes you have a situation where somebody falls on hard times,” Cantu said. “In a lot of cases, they’re so far behind that they don’t see the light.”

Round Rock mother Traci Chavez learned that first hand when her court-ordered $344 in monthly child support became a $46,000 obligation after she lost her job in October 2003.

“I told them several times I don’t have a job,” she said. “But they didn’t want to hear it.”

The attorney general’s office declined to specifically speak about Chavez’s case. However, a spokesman confirmed she missed several court dates before the office placed her on the Top 10 evader list in 2004.

Like Chavez, who worked as a saleswoman and computer technician, most of the state’s top evaders hold down blue-collar jobs. Last year, that list included a welder, a plumber, and several men described as “general laborers.”

It’s unlikely they’ll find the funds to pay off debts that in many cases add up to more than their annual salaries, said Doug Clark, executive director of the Dallas-based Fathers for Equal Rights, a paternal rights advocacy group.

“The longer they stay in jail, the longer the money isn’t being paid,” he said. “And a felony conviction on their record isn’t going to help the money to start flowing either.”

FINGER POINTING

It’s easy to be mired in finger pointing when listening to ex-spouses discuss outstanding debts, or asking custodial parents how the system failed them.

But it’s amazing how few any of those niggling details matters to a 16-year-old like Antonio Hendricks, of Elsa, who first saw a current photo of his dad on a wanted poster.

Antonio’s mother, Nancy, struggled for years to maintain a normal home life for her two sons, while working long hours to take home enough money to cover her children’s basic necessities.

Throughout, she fought their father — Ricardo Gonzalez, of La Blanca — in court, hoping a judge could force him to make regular financial contributions to their upbringing.

She met with failure at every turn, until Attorney General Abbott named him one of Texas’ top child support evaders late last year.

It’s an experience she now regrets.

Yet, one thing is still clear in her mind:

“The child support wasn’t so important,” Hendricks said. “Him being a part of our sons’ lives — that would have been enough.”

Tomorrow: Empty promises: Life after the state’s Top 10 evaders list.

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Monitor staff writer Sandra Gonzalez contributed to this report.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts, law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.