Failing to pay child support can mean time in the slammer in Montezuma County, an effective motivator for absentee parents to support the children they produced.

But that court-mandated action could be in jeopardy if a process preferred by the Colorado Department of Health and Human Services is used, social services officials told the Montezuma County Commission on Monday.

"What they want us to do differently is called an administrative process action, a system which avoids going to court so court time is not used up to get a court order," said Dennis Story, director of Montezuma County Social Services. "We are meeting the higher standard of the well-established court process of subpoenas and appearance, as opposed to the administrative process."

Montezuma County is the only one in the state that does not use the administrative process action, Story said. Rather than tying up the courts, the new administrative process allows a series of documents to be signed by county social services employees, sent to the negligent parent who owes child support, and then entered into court as an official document.

But Montezuma County Attorney Bob Slough told the commissioners that the system, in his opinion, may not be legal because it gives non-attorneys the ability to file documents in court. Additionally, Slough said, trying to reach deadbeat dads and moms requires getting them into court first rather than sending them a letter through the mail.

"The court order determines if a person owes child support and says pay or go to jail," he said. "For a lot of these people, this is the main motivation. Plus, who knows how many pay just because they know from others what the potential consequences are."

Slough and Story told the commissioners that the reasons behind the new system are only appropriate for urban areas, where child-support payments can more reasonably be collected through garnished wages. Those areas typically have higher employment and higher paying jobs, and overcrowded big city court dockets make it tough to get an offender through the process, they said, but none of these factors are applicable to rural areas.

"We are dealing with people who do not want to pay," Slough said. "With the courts, they have to come in because if they do not then an arrest warrant is issued."

"I do not know why, but this is a bureaucratic power play by the people in Denver to force us to do this, but I am concerned that the state action will dismantle a good program that works for this community. And they have not shown us that (the adminstrative process action) is better."