The Office of the Inspector General has started a website that lists parents who are far behind on child support obligations or who have fled the state or country to avoid paying child support payments. The Office of the Inspector General is in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The website is set up so that people can help the government find deadbeat parents so that they can be held responsible for the child support that is supposed to be paid to their children and the custodial parent. If a person is unable to pay child support or would like to seek a modification, it is better to speak to an attorney and go through the courts than run away.

The enforcement of child support payments is usually a matter for states, but the federal government may get involved if the "deadbeat parent" is in a different state than the dependent child or if they flee to another state or country to avoid making payments.

The federal government may also get involved depending on how long it has been that a noncustodial parent willfully does not pay child support and how far behind they are in the payments. For example, the "most wanted deadbeat parent" on the page owes more than $1 million that he has owed since 1996 for three children from two marriages.

According to the OIG, the federal government has since 2006 captured and convicted more than 500 deadbeat parents for collectively owing more than $33 million in unpaid court-ordered child support.

Source: Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, "OIG Launches Child Support Enforcement Web Page: Introduces 'most wanted' list of deadbeat parents," Katherine Harris, Jan. 17, 2012