A check in the mail led Daniel Davenport to a terrible discovery.
The Wichitan had lost his daughter, Ashley,when he and her mother broke up in 1988. Ashley stayed in the Golden State with her mother. Davenport left California in 1990 and returned to Wichita Falls.
Davenport lost Ashley again - this time to a fatal car accident in July 1995.
But he wouldn’t know about the wreck until 11 years later after, receiving a refund check for child support, arrears and medical insurance from the Texas Attorney General’s office.
Davenport pulled the check from his mailbox one day in April - of this year.
When Davenport and his fiancee Kelly Reece contacted the office to question the refund, they were told “the child is deceased and no more payments are required.”
A check for $2,160 was all that remained of Ashley’s life.
Davenport is sickened by the fact that his daughter’s life was shuffled away, lost in 11 years worth of paperwork, like a file on a messy desk.
“I thought they meant she had been dead six months since that was how much child support the check was for,” Davenport said. Davenport said the Texas office told him he’d have to contact the Stanislaus County Department of Child Support Services in California to find out more.
The Stanislaus County office told him Ashley had died in July 1995.
A news story Davenport obtained, published in the Modesto Bee, stated that Ashley, then 6 years old, was killed in a car accident on July 3, 1995. Her mother was driving and accelerated through a red light. The car was broadsided on the front passenger side.
Ashley was riding in a passenger’s lap in the front seat. She was ejected from the vehicle and suffered fatal chest and head injuries, according to an accident report from the Modesto Police Department.
A later article in the Bee stated that Ashley’s mother stayed one day in jail and received three years probation as a result of the accident.
Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General’s office child support division, said Texas was notified of the death in September 2005 by the Stanislaus County office - 10 years after Ashley’s death.
Rolfe said Texas is in discussions with California at this time about the Davenport case.
“We’re going over everything with a fine-toothed comb,” Rolfe said.
In Texas, “we routinely match our case load with death certificates issued by the Vital Statistics Unit through the Texas Department of State Health Services,” Rolfe said. Rolfe said the systems differ state by state, and the same procedures might not be in place in California.
Neal Selover, public information officer with the Stanislaus County Department of Child Support Services, said he was not able to speak about specific cases, citing privacy laws in California. He did not comment on any safeguards the office has to ensure clients are paying child support on live children and directed calls to the complaint division at the Stanislaus office.
In 1993, California opened a case on Ashley, and Texas was enlisted to collect the money from Davenport, who is now working as a mechanic in Wichita Falls. He said he did get behind a few times on the support payments and owed arrears.
He said he had been called to court numerous times, after 1995, and his bank account was even frozen in 2004 by the Texas Attorney General’s office to pay arrears - nine years after Ashley’s death.
He said he spoke with the Stanislaus office Tuesday, and they offered to send him a check for $2,000. But Davenport said he will not accept the money until they answer his questions, namely, how could both Texas and California lose a child for 11 years.
“I’ve got a bunch of questions they still have not answered,” Davenport said. “The money is not the deal. I just want somebody to take responsibility for this.”
He said he was considering obtaining legal counsel to deal with the agencies and get the story straight.
“They knew how to find me to take me to court, but they couldn’t find me to tell me my little girl was dead.”
Davenport and Ashley’s mother had separated shortly after Ashley was born in 1988, and Davenport hadn’t seen Ashley since she was 6 weeks old.
“We didn’t get along,” Davenport said of his former girlfriend. I was young and crazy, and one day I left to go to work and when I came home, she and Ashley were gone,” Davenport said.
Davenport said he did a three-month stint in jail in California in 1988, and, by the time he got out, he had lost track of both Ashley and her mother. He said he decided to come back to Wichita Falls, his home, in 1990.
“I’ve tried to contact her all these years, and I haven’t been able to find them,” Davenport said.
Davenport has had a checkered past with the law, according to the Web site PublicData.com. He admitted his criminal history.
“My past is my past. This isn’t about me. This is about the state of Texas and the state of California losing my daughter for 11 years,” Davenport said.
He said he was looking forward to this fall, when Ashley would have turned 18, so that he might be able to establish a relationship with her. Now, Davenport must deal with Ashley’s death.
“Nobody should have to go through this, to send payments every week on current child support only to find out their daughter died all these years ago,” Davenport said. “I don’t know how to even express how I feel about this.”
He just found out two weeks ago where his daughter is buried.
But Davenport is not ready to mourn.
He is preparing letters to send to every Attorney General’s office in the United States. He said he’s written letters to Gov. Rick Perry and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and has contacted Sen. Craig Estes’ office.
“I’m too upset to mourn right now. I am very mad. It sounds like to me, the system is the deadbeat,” Davenport said.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Ron Rutgers // Jun 9, 2006 at 7:37 pm
The California Child Support Syndicate strikes again. There is no level too low for these criminals to stoop.
“Neal Selover, public information officer with the Stanislaus County Department of Child Support Services, said he was not able to speak about specific cases, citing privacy laws in California. He did not comment on any safeguards the office has to ensure clients are paying child support on live children and directed calls to the complaint division at the Stanislaus office”
What case! There hasn’t been a case since the child died. It’s been a crime since 1995. I don’t believe privacy laws apply to crimes.
“He said he spoke with the Stanislaus office Tuesday, and they offered to send him a check for $2,000.”
If the money they were collecting was dispersed to the mother, why would they offer him anything. If the mother received the money then she was committing fraud. Could it be, they knew the child was dead, and were keeping the money? Why else invoke privacy?
.
2 kjm // Jun 10, 2006 at 11:23 am
I am sure this is not an unusual case considering how many children die each day. I am also sure that there are many fathers who have died and are still being charged for child support and interest. It requires a death certificiate to end child support in my state.
3 Kevin Merck // Jun 10, 2006 at 2:07 pm
What does anyone expect from a pig but a grunt? There is “absolutely†no level too low for these criminals to stoop.
Expect the “absolute worst†from people who violate the constitutional rights of millions of fathers, destroying countless lives, in the supposed “best interests of childrenâ€, in order to line their pockets with booty.
It leaves me at a complete loss of the ability to comprehend the capacity for such evil.
4 angelc20 // Jun 10, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I would like to see th emother in jail for fraud. I assume she recieved the support checks and knew the child was dead but failed to notify the father. I cna see that she was not close to the father but still close enough to suck away his money.
I think this man should file a big lawsuit against both states and the mother.
We need to fix this broken system. In the meantime men, keep your dick in a latex rubber suit before you stick it anywhere. Do consider a vasectomy.
Lets change the laws guys.
5 ericbmohr // Jun 10, 2006 at 2:58 pm
They call this “child support”? Enough said. Their actions & cover up speak for themselves.
6 anothervoice // Jun 10, 2006 at 4:43 pm
I would say this is “beyond belief” but given the theives that are behind this, the child support enforcement criminals, this is actually quite expected. The entire system should be thrown out as unconstitutional and the real criminals thrown in prison and the keys melted down.
There is no child’s privacy to protect, there is no privacy to protect. A crime was committed in July 1995 and $2,160 is not even close to what this man is entitled too. For starters fraud was committed and it was done with malice. He is actually entitled to triple damages, the former custodial parent thrown in prision along with everyone that coninuted this case for nearly 11 years after the child died.
Based on $2,160 this means that the near 11 year amount is $47,187. He is entiteld to legal costs (yes, lawyers get money whether for good or bad even though they are the cause of a goof deal of evil, and the incompetent ones become judges that perpetrated further abuse) times three.
Let’s emotionally supprt this guy and his efforts to stick it to everyone involved.
7 littlelawyergirl // Jun 12, 2006 at 1:56 pm
You are making a false assumption, anothervoice. It is possible that Mr. Davenport already received a full refund of all moneys overpaid. You will note that he said that he has fallen into arrears a few times. You see, Mr. Davenport could have owed current support from the time of the breakup, 1988, until the death of the child, in 1995. You see, he might have only overpaid $2160 after arrears that accrued from 1988-1995 had been paid.
So, if he had accumulated a high amount of arrears, then when DCSS adjusted the accounts to ensure that zero current was charged from the date of death on, then applied the payments to arrears accrued before the child’s death, then reduce the interest accordingly, they would come up with the amount he had overpaid, and would refund it.
I can’t say that DCSS doesn’t make mistakes, mistakes do happen, especially when dealing with interstate jurisdictions and very old cases. But I can say that if someone has overpaid welfare arrears, DCSS will pay the person back all of it. (If they overpaid non-welfare arrears, that must be paid back by the parent who received the money).
Also, if the mother was paid welfare after the child died (and again, we don’t actually know that happened), she would be required to pay that back. If a parent commits welfare fraud, they must pay restitution in addition to any jail sentence they must serve.
8 Grizz // Jun 16, 2006 at 5:44 am
“I thought they meant she had been dead six months since that was how much child support the check was for,â€
littlelawyergirl, Why would you think that $2160 was for the whole 11 years when he’s quoted as saying that the amount only coverd 6 months?
Why would they have offered him another 2000 dollars if he was already refunded the whole amount?
Unless there are some significant differences between this story and what actually happened, how could you defend this system that robbed this man of 11 years of his life? You must be a real lawyer.
9 mac1199 // Dec 20, 2006 at 11:32 pm
I can tell littlelawyergirl is a real lawyer and probably works for the corrupt system she protects in her statement. The entire justice system is a joke and cares only about the numbers they see and not the Fathers. A friend of mine in Massachusetts went to court with her new husband and she said 7 fathers owing between 500 and 1,500$ in back support were taken away in handcuffs to jail and 3 women owing pretty close to the same were sent home. Now what a nice holiday those children should be having now that Daddy is in jail. Her new husband sold his 1995 pontiac to a friend for 400$ and an 800$ gold chain the wife had bought him years before for 200$ to stay out of jail. The women were sent home owing nothing that day. I’m sorry , but I think the courts are far too powerful to defeat and no governement officials will ever speak up to help us. Now that child support is a 91 billion dollar a year industry, I mean wow now being a Dad is a business? When will somebody do something? I speak everday how corrupt the system is and people just shake their heads and do nothing. What about a million Dad walk on washington? If we could most of us could only afford to get there? Please make me a believer. I pray for the Dads everyday. Godbless my brothers and happy holidays.
10 paula.blanco // Dec 26, 2006 at 8:03 am
wow!!! It doesn’t surprise me at all! Littlelawyergirl I think you have your numbers wrong. The mother should be put in jail and also have to pay him “child support” per say. It’s time to put that mother thru what Mr. Davenport went thru for 11 years!!! I am a mother and I CANNOT stand these child support laws!! It is very unfair for Mr. Davenport not only did he lose money but most importantly he lost his daughter, all because that mother was sorbid.
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