Child support challenged

      A Las Vegas woman who makes about $1,000 a month must pay about $10,000 in retroactive child support to her millionaire ex-husband, says the Clark County Family Court.
      Retroactive child support awards are not unusual, but the woman and her lawyer say this case shows laws permitting them are misused.
      "Child support laws were intended to keep mothers from raising their children in poverty; now they're being used as revenge," said Lisa Stiller, 47, after a recent court hearing where she was given a 10-day suspended jail sentence for falling behind in her payments.
      "The irony of this is that one of the reasons he got the children was that he was better able to support them," she added.
      Her ex-husband, Steven Scroggin, 44, declined to comment.
      His attorney, Radford Smith, said, "It is the policy of this state that parents should contribute to their children's support, according to their ability, and that's what the court has ordered in this case. Teen-age children are sometimes very expensive. They want to have cars, they want to go to proms, they want to go to college."
      Although the Oregon court that granted custody to the father in 1991 did not require Stiller pay child support, Family Court Judge Steven Jones ordered it in late 1995, after both parties moved independently to Las Vegas. He made the order retroactive to 1991.
      Stiller and Scroggin were married in 1979, and divorced less than five years later, in 1984. They had a 3-year-old son and two younger daughters; the children are now 16, 14 and 13 respectively.
      Stiller was initially awarded primary physical custody, but after a protracted battle, her ex-husband achieved not only primary custody but also full legal custody. Stiller said one reason for Scroggin's victory was his better financial ability to support the children; Scroggin was an attorney, while Stiller had been laid off her counseling job and was on unemployment.
      Scroggin also had married again, to a physician, and relocated to Las Vegas. Stiller went back to college, then moved to Las Vegas in 1995, she said, to make it easier to see her children. "I had visitation rights but couldn't afford to pay my part of flying them back and forth," she explained. "I used my student loan money to move to Las Vegas."
      The parents began negotiating to establish a visitation plan suitable for parents who lived in the same city.
      "Children need something consistent and stable," Smith explained. "To just have a parent visiting any time they want causes disruption." When negotiations broke down, Scroggin asked the Clark County Family Court to order a visitation plan, and Jones approved a plan giving Stiller frequent time with her children.
      At the same time, Scroggin asked the court to make Stiller pay child support.
      Neither parent has a conventional job; Scroggin considers himself semi-retired, and concentrates on managing investments. Stiller, despite extensive post-graduate education, is employed only part-time as a free-lance writer and teaching freshman English at the Community College of Southern Nevada.
      Financial statements Scroggin has filed with the court show he has more than $1 million in assets, mostly owned jointly with his present wife, and estimates his income at $13,000 a month, "based upon wife's income and investment income, which fluctuates." Stiller's financial statement said she makes some $1,000 a month, though her ex-husband contends she also gets regular subsidies from her wealthy mother.
      Despite the disparity in resources, Jones ordered Stiller to pay $180 a month child support. He also made the award retroactive to 1991 and entered a judgment for some $8,000.
      Stiller said that because she was unable to make some payments and because interest is charged on the debt, the arrears is now more than $10,000. The court ordered the $180 monthly payment, and an additional $20 toward the arrears, deducted directly from her paychecks.
      "But because I work at the community college my payment schedule is a little strange. I don't get paychecks every month, and sometimes I have to pay a little later," she said.
      Because of late payments, Thomas Leeds, a court hearing master who specializes in support orders, in February sentenced her to 10 days in jail. The sentence was suspended, but Stiller was threatened with actually serving time if she does not either bring payments current by August, or else show evidence of serious efforts to get a better-paying job.
      "I look at it this way," Leeds said at the February hearing. "If you make the payments, the court will not interfere in your life."
      Brian Steinberg, a Las Vegas attorney who specializes in family law, recently agreed to represent Stiller when she returns to court June 11 in an attempt to get the decision reconsidered. He expects to lose money on the case, he said, but took it because he thought Stiller got a raw deal.
      "This is pretty much the way they do it in Nevada, all the time," Steinberg said. "And it's a miserable thing.
      "It puts one party in a position of power," he said. "In people's minds, they say if you don't pay child support, you can't see the kids, even though there is no legal connection between those issues. Some people go after support payments, even knowing the other person can't pay, so they can use the nonpayment as a weapon.
      "In fairness to the judge who made this particular decision, he may not have been given the information he needed to make a better one."
      In ordering the retroactive payments, Jones cited a Nevada statute that says when no court order regarding support exists, a parent may receive it retroactively for up to four years. Several attorneys in family practice said retroactive awards are not unusual under those circumstances.
      However, Steinberg claims those are not the circumstances of this case. The Oregon custody decree said the court would retain jurisdiction to decide support payments. "The ex-husband's position was that the judge in Oregon never decided that issue, so the Nevada court can decide it."
      But Steinberg says court documents prove there was extensive debate on the issue of child support. "In view of that debate, the judge's order constitutes a decision. The decision was there wouldn't be any child support."
      Judges of all states are supposed to honor decisions made by the courts of other states, but Steinberg learned after taking Stiller's case that nobody had presented Jones's court with evidence the Oregon judge considered child support and rejected it. By proving that, he hopes to get Judge Jones to reverse or modify his own ruling.
      Nevada law says a judge must award at least $100 per child per month "unless the court makes a written finding that the obligator is unable to pay even the minimum." Jones did make such a finding -- his award amounts to $60 per child per month -- but Steinberg says a judge can legally go even lower, or not award support at all.
      "But in practice, if there is leniency, they just impose the minimum. I think that judges need to take a look at what's going on in each situation," Steinberg said.
      Stiller also plans to ask the court, once more, to change custody. This time she will ask for physical custody of her two daughters, and joint legal custody of all three children.
      "Sole custody is usually given when there is some problem with the other person, such as drug abuse, or a parent who is a felon," Steinberg said. "None of that is present here, yet the husband got full legal custody.
      "This is a woman who got trampled by the justice system, basically because her husband was part of that system and she wasn't," Steinberg said.
      "Her biggest problem was that she wasn't wealthy, and that's not the way things should be working.''