PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

DAVID BARDES: ANOTHER FATHER WHO IS MAD AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE

Those readers who have electronic access to Federal Court documents may want to review the Complaint David Bardes filed against the South Carolina Department of Social Services and the Charleston County Council. We are somewhat familiar with both Mr. Bardes and his grievances with the Family Court and DSS. Click here to read an old letter he sent to DSS and click here and scan down to review his comment to one of our posts.

We do not agree with Mr. Bardes 100%, however, we think he has some legitimate complaints, particularly given some of the recent problems exposed at DSS. Among other things, he objects to the imposition of the 5% child support payment processing fee which, according to this post, is not supposed to go into effect until "implementation of the State wide Child Support System," presumably whenever this Legislation is enacted. And as the comment to "IS THERE UNMONITORED TAXATION IN SC FAMILY COURT?" demonstrates, Mr. Bardes is not alone in his dissatisfaction.

We are at a loss as to how the Family Courts have apparently managed to ignore Court Orders and prematurely increase the child support processing fees. If not authorized either in the Final Support Orders or by Statute, from where does the authority to impose "Court Costs" of 5% come? As $67 Million and counting of fines demonstrates, South Carolina is nowhere close to "implementation of the State wide Child Support System."

If (the editorial) we were members of the South Carolina General Assembly we would take a good, long, hard look at not only this 5% "Court Cost" assessment, but at all the fees and fines that are running through the Family Court accounts. We would also give some serious consideration to passing this legislation.