Passport Denied When Parent Owes Support Arrears

You are a non-custodial parent planning a vacation to Cancun with your kids. Your passport has lapsed and you apply for a new one, along with your children. Instead of receiving your passport, you get a letter from the Secretary of State denying your applications. Why?Because you owe more than $2500 in child support, and because the custodial parent must assent to the passports for the kids. Child support enforcement has had a federal component for several years now.Back in 2001, the U.S. government mandated that states align their child support accounts with state-wide computer programs. In Michigan, all county Friends of the Court have implemented the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES). MiCSES then certifies the support...

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Posted in: child support arrearage,Health and Human Services,passport,State Department

Law Firms Going Paperless, Slowly

Slowly but surely. That cliche best describes the pace at which area law firms are eliminating the paper clutter from their law offices.As Southeast Michigan touts innovations such as "Automation Alley", the sluggish pace of paper elimination is frustrating to many legal practitioners. Colorado and a handful of other states already have state-wide paperless court systems. The federal courts have been paperless for years. In Oakland County, however, only a few judges have electronic filing as an e-pilot program. Fortunately, the experiment seems to be working.In March 2003, Judge Joan E. Young, then the chief judge of the Oakland Circuit's family court, offered a standing-room-only presentation on the timeline for the court's so-called e-filing...

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Posted in: e-filing,Judge Joan E. Young,paperless

Oakland Sheriff's Marine Division Downsizing

You had to see this coming. In this era of government funding shortfalls, and given Brooks Patterson's ever watchful budgetary eye, the Oakland County Sheriff's Marine Division takes a funding hit.Watercraft enthusiasts using Oakland County's many navigable lakes have all seen the Sheriff's white runabouts (with blue flashing stem-light) patrolling the county waterways on busy weekends and holidays. These units have probably kept a dampener on serious drunk driving by watercraft operators.Such patrols will be eliminated after this season, according to the Sheriff's Department. This cutback does not mean the end of the Marine Division. But now, townships and municipalities will have to contract with the Sheriff if their waterway(s) are to be...

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Divorce in the NFL

Maximum temptation; continuous travel; lots of money. These are just some of the factors that contribute to the excessive divorce-rate among players in the NFL.There are no solid statistics, but an unofficial poll along with anecdotal evidence puts the divorce-rate for NFL players at 70% according to a recent NYT article; significantly higher than the overall divorce-rate of about 50%.Another statistic, perhaps correlated to the high rate of divorce among players, is that within two-years of their retirement, a shocking 78% of these NFL players are bankrupt, unemployed or divorced. There are good reasons for this.Among professional athletes, football players have a rough row to hoe. They suffer more physical pain on average than in other sports...

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Prescription Privacy Rights

When we fill a prescription, most of us believe that action, along with our identity, is private. In fact, the name and dosage of the drug, the prescribing physician, and your own name and social security number become a commodity bought and sold in the medical data-mining industry.A little-known provision buried in February's federal stimulus legislation, however, now requires pharmacy benefit managers, bankers, and medical claim processors to comply with Federal privacy and security regs. The new law is being fitted with federal regulations designed to give private rights some teeth; and violations a real bite.Both Walgreens and CVS have been defending recent litigation claiming violations of patients' rights to privacy relative to their...

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Posted in: CVS,health care,prescription,privacy,stimulus legislation,Walgreens