LITIGATING PRECARITY: LOW-WAGE WORKERS AND CHILD-SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT.

The child-support enforcement system has failed to come to grips with the labor market realities of the low-wage fathers it summons to court for nonpayment. This Article uses original empirical data gathered from a court-based ethnography and in-depth interviews with judges, lawyers, and noncustodial parents to illustrate how precarious workers experience the child-support enforcement system. The noncustodial fathers in the study are predominantly Black, low-wage, precarious workers who possess significant barriers to employment, including health problems, histories of incarceration, and limited education. Their real-life work experiences present vivid portraits of their difficulties obtaining and retaining stable jobs that provide a living wage. In an effort to find work, they often seek temp jobs or pursue a wide variety of ventures in the cash economy, everything from cutting hair to collecting cans and bottles for money. In light of their precarious work experiences and volatile earnings, it is no surprise that the noncustodial fathers in the study were not able to reliably pay their child-support order in full each month and, consequently, were summoned to court for nonpayment of support. Rather than confronting the reality of what the low-wage precarious labor market offers these fathers, the judges and government attorneys in enforcement hearings, and the child-support system more generally, stubbornly persist in enforcing child-support orders, premised on a full-time minimum wage job, that bear little relationship to the fathers' actual earnings. Instead, inflated child-support orders set fathers up to accrue tremendous child-support debts that burden them and their families. And fathers experience harsh and counterproductive enforcement remedies, including the loss of their drivers' licenses and threats of civil incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]