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sixate · 05-03-2003, 06:39 PM

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Boy, 12, pays child support
02 May 2003
By LEAH HAINES and GORDON JON THOMPSON

Twenty-eight boys aged between 13 and 15 who have fathered children are being forced to pay child support – the tax department will even seize the money from their paper round.

Inland Revenue confirmed a father's age was irrelevant when it demanded child support contributions.

And The Dominion Post has learned of child support being demanded of a 12-year-old for a baby born to an 18-year-old woman.

Under the Crimes Act a 12-year-old girl could be considered a victim of a sexual crime if an 18-year-old man had sex with her.

But sex between women and children is not prohibited – as The Dominion Post highlighted in the case of a female swimming coach who had sex with a 13-year-old swimming champion.

In fact, a boy who got a woman pregnant could be hit with heavy penalties if he did not make arrangements to pay support for their baby, IRD child support manager David Udy confirmed.

Any unapproved debt would accrue 2 per cent penalties each month till the boy started earning and money could be taken from him.

"The child might have an income from delivering pamphlets, for instance. It would be possible for Inland Revenue to take that income if they did not voluntarily contribute," Mr Udy said.

Justice Minister Phil Goff has said the Crimes Act could be changed by the end of the year to prohibit sex between women and children. A spokesman said Mr Goff could then look at other laws such as for child support.

Family law expert and Otago University dean of law Mark Henegan said it would probably then exempt boys from paying if they had been deemed sex-crime victims.

Till then, the act "goes a little bit against the principles of child law" which generally held that a child had to understand the implications of his actions before he was responsible for them, he said.

Several family lawyers spoken to said they had never encountered cases of such young fathers being asked for child support.

However children's commissioner advocate Trish Grant said the office was contacted by the family of a 12-year-old Napier boy in 2000 who the IRD wanted to pay child support to an 18-year-old woman.

Advocates had met with the IRD and the boy's extremely upset family, but the boy was made to pay.

The office "absolutely maintained" that children had the right to be financially supported by their parents, whether the parents played a part in their life or not, Ms Grant said.

But the personal circumstances of very young parents should also be considered.

"The situation might preclude them from getting involved in studies, for example . . . They have a right to a childhood and adolescence, and they should be held accountable. But to what degree needs to be based on what their future path might be," she said.

Unless they had considerable savings, most of the very young fathers were unlikely to be paying more than $13 a week – the minimum IRD required of liable parents, Mr Udy said.

The responsibility for the payments was theirs, not their parents.

The only exemptions were for children born out of illegal relationships such as rape and incest – in such cases the mother was not obliged to name the father for income support purposes.

And liable parents were not obliged to support their children when in prison or in long-term hospital care.

About 250,000 non-custodial parents pay child support. Eleven of them are 16, 50 are 17, the majority are aged between 35 and 45 and the oldest liable parent is 70.