High-Profile Case Not On State's Top-10 Deadbeats List

A $165,151 debt to his former wife and four children has landed David William Earley in the Pasco County Jail, but it doesn't put him at the top of Florida's growing deadbeat parents list.

Earley, a felony fugitive first located by News Channel 8 then arrested by Pasco deputies on Monday, faces up to five years in prison. He is accused of skipping out on his probation and failing to pay child support during the past 19 years.

But Earley doesn't owe half as much as some deadbeat parents. No. 1 on the list of delinquent cases handled by Florida's Department of Revenue owes nearly $350,000.

The department turned over a Top 10 list in response to public records requests from New Channel 8,
but refused to include names because of privacy laws.

Here, at least, are the individual amounts: $349,555; $334,197; $321,930; $290,631, $233,932; $231,183; $223,629; $211,347; $207,114, and $206,182.

Still, Earley's debt would put him in the top 1 percent of offenders if he were on the revenue department's list. He's not. The reason: private attorneys, not the state, pursued his debt on behalf of his ex-wife and children, as is usually the case except with parents receiving some form of public assistance.

Earley remarried and lives on an acre estate in New Port Richey with his current wife, two daughters, a horse and a dog. His wife owns a hair salon but Earley said he can't find work laying tile to earn the "chunk of money" he needs to pay child support to four children from his first marriage.

So where are these other deadbeats?

Among eight counties in the Bay area, Hillsborough recorded the biggest single debt, $207,114; the most cases, 50,875; and the highest number of children involved in cases, 82,919, equal to 45 percent of the children enrolled in Hillsborough public schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. Hillsborough is the region's most populous county.

From October 2007 through September of 2008, the state collected more than $101 million on behalf of children in Hillsborough and another $44 million remains uncollected.

Donna Keese said her ex-boyfriend owes her $29,000 in back child support but her chance of collecting appears dim.

When her son turned 18, Keese said the state dropped enforcement of her claim and told her she would have to hire a lawyer and pursue the debt on her own through the court system.

"I don't have the money," Keese said. "I don't see how I should have to hire a lawyer and go after child support when it was their job to get it."

Keese, like scores of other parents responding to News Channel 8's David Earley story, complain that Florida's child support system is failing parents and kids who need it the most.

Joseph Buchanan, on the other hand, said he's been struggling to keep up with his $100 a week child support while earning $10 an hour in Hillsborough. Yet the terms of his child support keep him away from his children.

"I haven't seen them in four years," said Buchanan, who acknowledges his domestic strife resulted in his arrest on a battery charge.

There is one bright spot in local child support figures just released by the revenue department: No deadbeat parent in the Bay area is on the state's Top 10 list.