[endeavor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_amendment

In 2003, Keith McLeod, author of The Multiple Scandals of Child Support, testified[5] before the United States House Committee on Ways and Means that

"The 1986 Bradley Amendment to Title IV-D forbids any reduction of arrearage or retroactive reduction for any reason, ever. This reinforces the approach that inability to pay is no excuse. Needless to say, there are endless stories of men who are now crushed by a debt they will never be able to pay because they were:

• In a coma
• A captive of Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War
• In jail
• Medically incapacitated
• Lost their job but were confident of another so did nothing until it was too late
• Did not know they could not ask for retroactive adjustments and waited too long
• Cannot afford a lawyer to seek adjustment when adjustment was warranted
• Wouldn’t use the legal system even if they could, feeling it alien from their world, so don’t ask for a reduction when the legal establishment expects them to.

Some say this measure is a violation of due process and cruel and unusual as it removes the use of human discretion from dealing with individual cases, not to mention removing human compassion. But non-custodial fathers do not have the money to fight a constitutional case."

The Amendment has been a controversial law and has resulted in several notorious examples:

• Bobby Sherrill, a Lockheed employee in Kuwait from North Carolina, was captured by Iraqis and spent nearly five months as an Iraqi hostage. Sherrill was arrested the night after his release for not paying $1,425 in child support while he was a hostage.[6][7][8]
• Clarence Brandley, a Texas high school janitor, was wrongly convicted in 1980 of murder. [9] After spending many years in prison and on death row,[10] he was released in 1990 and he then sued the state of Texas for wrongful imprisonment in 1993.[11] The state then responded with a bill for nearly $50,000 in child support that had not been paid while in prison.[12] Dianna Thompson of The American Coalition of Fathers and Children told the Houston Chronicle that federal law makes it illegal for states to forgive child support payments regardless of circumstance. [13] Michael McCormick, of the American Coalition of Fathers and Children said, concerning child support payments, "I'm not aware of any state where it says a wrongly convicted individual is relieved of their obligation." [14] Despite paying child support every month since his release via wage garnishment, Brandley's child support total reached $73,000 in 2003, when a judge reduced his total to $22,000; however, this amount is still more than triple the $7,000 in back child support Brandley owed at the time of his arrest in 1980. [15] Recently, Brandley lost his job in the economic downturn in 2008; he has since lost his car and house as the child support bills and interest keep coming.[16]
• Taron James, a U.S. Navy veteran from California, was forced to continue to pay child support until 2006, even after the child was demonstrated by DNA test in 2001 to be not his; James paid $12,000 in such payments.[17][18][19] A California District Court of Appeal eventually set aside the paternity judgment against James in 2006, but the same court denied James' request to have his child support payments reimbursed.[20]

If the ex-husband does make child support payments, then I wonder if the funds are actually going towards the benefit of the child and not being misused? The above are just some famous examples, I don't know how common this is.