Jones v. U.S. Child Support Recovery

Facts

Kathleen Francis Jones and Clyde David Fritch divorced in 1993 pursuant to a California Superior Court decree that awarded Mr. Fritch primary physical custody of their son and ordered Jones to pay four hundred sixty-eight dollars per month in child support. After Jones missed approximately three payments, Mr. Fritch retained defendants U.S. Child Support Recovery and Zandra L. Perkins to collect the delinquent support. Defendants sent Jones a letter demanding payment of one thousand two hundred eighty-five dollars in arrears. When Jones requested a payment plan, defendants refused and demanded full payment. Defendants then engaged in a campaign of telephone calls leaving messages that questioned Jones’s fitness as a mother, stating she was using the term mother loosely, asking how she could look at herself in the mirror, and suggesting she was spending child support money on herself rather than her son. After these efforts failed, defendants escalated by sending a “Wanted” poster to Jones’s employer Silicon Systems and to her mother and siblings, labeling Jones a “Dead Beat Parent” with a well-paying job whose own flesh and blood wished his mother cared enough to send court-ordered child support.