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The terrible and unnecessary suffering of children when their deadbeat parent refuses to help pay for their support is incalculable.

However, the tools and weapons now available to deal with the deadbeat parent have improved the chances of collecting child support, if the tools and weapons are aggressively used.

Six of the tools and weapons that can be used are outlined as follows:

1. Filing a petition in court to hold the non-paying parent, who is not complying with the court order, in contempt of court and request that the parent pay up or be sent to jail. In almost all cases, that produces an immediate payment of the support arrearages and acts as a deterrent against future non-payment.

2. Most states today enter an "order of withholding" at the same time they enter a child support order. The employer of the paying parent must honor this order. The exact amount due under the court order is withheld each payday from the paycheck of the paying parent and sent-depending upon the applicable state law--to the custodial parent either directly or via an agency that processes and forwards the funds. Unfortunately, central agencies in most states are not yet prepared to handle the deluge of checks that come in, and therefore many recipients have had their support checks unduly delayed.

3. Wage withholding is an effective tool, and ever since President Clinton signed an executive order in 1995, all federal agencies, including the military, honor state child support orders. They now cooperate in supplying information and data on federal employees to the appropriate support collecting agencies or to individual recipients upon their submission of a court order directing it to be done. 4. Many states now have laws that allow the courts to suspend or revoke the driver's license of a spouse who is not paying his or her court-ordered child support. This weapon has proved to be an effective way to force deadbeat parents to pay up and honor their child support commitments.

5. New federal laws require employers to report the names and social security numbers of all new employees they have hired each month to the federal government. With the use of this data, the states can track deadbeat parents, even when they move from one job to another or from one state to another.

6. The financial institutions data matching systems allow child support enforcement agencies in all states to get information on newly opened bank accounts in all federally insured financial institutions and match the social security numbers of those account holders with the rolls of deadbeat parents owing child support. This enables the agency or individuals to have those accounts frozen, even though the institutions must by law notify the account holder of the frozen account and the account holder then has the choice of paying up or having a judge be made aware of the existence of the account. Once a judge is told of the existence of such an account it is evidence to a court that the deadbeat parent has the ability to pay but has failed to do so, and therefore can be found in contempt of court and punished.

Herbert A. Glieberman is a family lawyer in Chicago, IL, and a member of the USLaw.com Affiliate Network. He can be reached at 19 South LaSalle Street, Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60603-1402, email: hglieber@aol.com.