A new law in Texas requires convicted drunk drivers to pay child support if they kill a child’s parent or guardian, according to House Bill 393.
The law, which went into effect Friday, says those convicted of intoxication manslaughter must pay restitution. The offender will be expected to make those payments until the child is 18 or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later,” the legislation says.
Intoxication manslaughter is defined by state law as a person operating “a motor vehicle in a public place, operates an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride, or assembles a mobile amusement ride; and is intoxicated and by reason of that intoxication causes the death of another by accident or mistake.”
Damn Texas. Sometimes you do manage to do something right.
This just seems like theater. What if you disable the parents such that they can’t support their kid? You slip through?
It’s theater. People go to prison for intoxication manslaughter. How are they making money to pay for child support? What kind of job will they really get after getting out of prison for essentially murder?
A cynical person might even say this is an attempt by the state and insurance companies to justify not having any sort of security net for victims’ families. If one person can be held financially responsible for the kids, why should anyone else have to step in?
That is exactly what it is, aimed at drunk drivers first because everyone will be on board with that demographic first. Then it will be expanded over time.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. – H.L. Mencken
Like how your insurance doesn’t work if you get hurt on the job?
Also, why just drunk driving? Why not you pay child support for murder?
Because if you get convicted of murder, you go to jail for a long period of time and never really make much money again, even if you get out.
Their child support payments would be like 16.53 per month.
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Touché. Maybe to bring it back into the realms of ‘worth keeping’, it could be means-tested (so of you have assets then this stands and you gotta liquefy that wealth, but if you’re essentially unable to pay its recognized as a barrier to rehabilitation?)
I’m being incredibly naive here, I know…
Then they pay it.
Murder is not near the problem of driving. Few people murder, but many have accidents.
If someone is unable to pay the restitution because they’re incarcerated, they’re expected to make payments no “later than the first anniversary of the date,” of their release, the law says.
From the article. So seems like they thought of that too
So how long do you get for manslaughter in the us? 8 years? So at best the child gets support like 9 years later and only if the person manages to get a good enough job… Maybe the life of a child shouldn’t be a lottery but just backed by the state
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Are you replying to the right person?
They did something that wasn’t evil, just stupid. I guess that is a win for texas. There are already systems to make people pay damages to other people without having the child go trough the indignity of getting child support from a murderer.
Indignity of receiving child support? Are you kidding?
We’re talking about a child/children’s parent being killed, and you think it’s somehow unjust that they’re receiving the smallest amount of financial restitution from the person who killed them. I’d love to hear you explain how this is somehow stupid or insulting to a single parent and the surviving children.
All the words in my comment are important and you seem to have cut out a large part of them like some kind of weird ransome note.
I said that damages, that means the same as financial restitution, should be and is payed out in these kinds of cases. There is already a legal framework for that and it doesn’t involve child support like the drunk driver is the kids new dad. It is a gross way of looking at it and if it is truly child support like child support is handled then they have suddenly introduced a criminal aspect to a system that doesn’t normally interface with the justice system.
I am not going to oppose anything that gets more support to single parents and children who lose a parent.
Being opposed to this because of what it’s called is a ridiculously short sighted view to take. I don’t care what this is called, but it is not gross, and it is not stupid.
Do you actually read my comments or do you just skim them?
Two things in a row it seems. This is weird.
Seems like they have come along way since the grousing about the laws in the 80s coming into effect to ban a hard working person from enjoying a couple on the way home from work…
https://youtube.com/shorts/BVk-_xhccK4?si=aMU_vedYJAYnKg0y
Mix this in with the freeway speed limits are 80MPH on the highway in. Texas and often 65 for work zones on the smaller 2 lane highways. One can’t even go that fast on the I5 in Oregon with the Max being only 60 mph without construction delays. Can’t imagine adding a couple of drinks into the mix on the way home from a 12 hour day…
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Really, shouldn’t this apply to all manslaughter and murder cases?
Totally. But the US is obsessed with punishment rather than reparations.
And rehabilitation
it’s all theatre, take something people love (children, mothers) & something people hate (criminals), now they can justify passing any legislation & continue expanding their control over time without fixing the underlying issues like lack of public transportation. but hey, guns are legal…FOR THE CHILDREN!
Maybe. You would basically be created a two-tiered system of punishment. If you kill me you have to pay for my kids, if you kill someone childless you don’t pay.
I am not sure what the repercussions of that would be.
The fact someone can kill anyone, intentionally or not, and expect to be free soon enough to get a job and pay child support is nuts.
Should, yes. Does it already exist, yes. It can just be time consuming. Kill one parent surviving parent or guardian or state placed guardian is then supposed to go to civil court and a judge will rule the person pays support. Some would say that is costly but the court fees will end up having to be paid by the person the judge rules against. (Which many attorneys will pick up pro bono because no judge is going to rule that killing a parent(s) didnt cause at LEAST financial/ impact on the child/family.
you know what prevents drunk driving? proper public transit
Or people could stop it at the source and be responsible. Probably too much too ask.
Fixing issues on the individual level is exactly why america is the way it is. Systems solutions exist
In the same way telling teens to not have sex will stop teen pregnancies.
what is the source? be very detailed in what you’re suggesting please.
Source of what? Drunk driving? That would probably be the individual, who knowing that the only mode of transportation for the night is to drive themselves and still decided to drink and then drive. Is that specific enough for you or are you still struggling with the concept?
Yeah, you’re saying the same thing, public transit.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. That’s what you want me to say, but you are very incorrect.
From a country with proper public transport here (Norway): people still drive drunk with that, so having some proper punishment won’t hurt you.
Much FEWER people driving drunk, though, which is the point. Just because the solution doesn’t take the problem from 100 to 0 doesn’t mean that taking it to 20 or whatever isn’t beneficial.
Also, “having some proper punishment won’t hurt you” is ridiculously wrong, based on the US having one of if not THE most punitive “justice” system and amongst the highest rates of crime of all western countries.
Prevention and restorative justice works MUCH better at decreasing crime than revenge-based punishment.
The highest incarceration and punishment rate in the world. If you went by the statistics, Americans are, “apparently,” 4.3 times more likely to be criminals than Chinese citizens, and it just gets worse from there, as every other country in the world has even fewer people incarcerated per 100,000 people.
Our punishment system is broken.
There’s also shootings in Norway. The key difference is frequency
The real headline here is Texas being in the news for something that isn’t shitty.
It’s new law day here in Texas. Typically because of the weird way our state works, laws passed in the once every other year legislature only becomes effective on September 1st of that year.
So good stuff like this, the tampon tax thing, etc yes it’s all good headline news.
But the vile, anti queer, christostate nonsense goes live now too.
Punishing drunk drivers is well-deserved, but as long as car-dependent infrastructure encourages drunk driving, it is considerably more difficult to actually decrease the rate of it. Taking a taxi is expensive and being a DD is no fun, so people take stupid risks. If you know you can take public transit home, there’s no reason to take such a risk at all.
This honestly reads like a defense of drunk driving, blaming the lack of infrastructure for bad decision.
Edit: or something very close to that.
But if you’re just saying we should design around stupid, then I guess I can agree there.
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“No offense, but you’re fucking stupid.”
Like that kind of thing?
I mean, you said it.
lol
Explaining is not forgiving.
You have to design around stupid, because this is the real world. People can only expected to be rational sometimes, and in aggregate, you need systems that expect people to take whatever is the most obvious or easy choice available to them, whether it’s actually a good idea or not.
Could take a Uber/Lyft.
I deal with this issue, the big bus station and my house are divided by a highway. So me and my buddies go out it either has to be very local or I have to take a rideshare for a five minute drive home.
the big bus station and my house are divided by a highway
Why does this have to be a thing? In my country they have bridges for pedestrians over the road, or underground passageway.
Because america
I live in a city where taking an Uber or Lyft a few miles is like $25, maybe $50 at the last call surge. Unfortunately ride-sharing is a lot more expensive in cities that don’t also have good transit, so I keep getting reminded that $25 is cheap for a ride share across any distance.
Back when I used to go out drinking, catching the last train home or taking an Uber was my go-to choice. I don’t drink much nowadays, but the rush home in an area without good transit infrastructure is still something I think about a lot.
Oof sorry
not everyone can justify that every time they go out with friends
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I wonder how this will work in practice since most of the time if you kill someone under the influence your life is basically over. Not exactly going to be able to pay a percent of your earnings while you are in jail.
nah, cyclist here. people “walk” on vehicular manslaughter all the time. it’s super fucked up. commonly a suspended sentence is issued.
Gee that is just fucking peachy.
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Vehicular manslaughter !== Killing someone by drunk driving. Drunk driving is clear negligence, hitting someone entirely on accident shouldn’t ruin two lives. In those articles it doesn’t say anything about the driver being drunk
criminal negligence causing death is manslaughter.
Yes for drunk driving- I agree. My issue is saying that someones life being ruined if they weren’t impaired and made what was a genuine mistake.
This guy was on drugs and frustrated because a “slow driver” ahead of him
This guy was on drugs and frustrated because a “slow driver” ahead of him.
Ah ok than should do jail time.
i 100% agree with you and 200% disagree with the judge and legal system who let him walk
hitting someone entirely on accident shouldn’t ruin two lives.
Why? Was the victim entirely innocent? Did it result in permanent injury or death of the victim(s)? Would it have been less dangerous if the one who produced the accident did not drive a car? Was the driver incapacitated by alcohol/drugs/anything else? If the answer to ANY of those is “yes”, then it should very fucking well ruin two lives. And if the driver had a license, the entire system that granted them the responsibility of handling a few tons of metal should be considered accomplices until they can fucking prove otherwise.
Or at least have the decency to let the victim’s family decide, don’t take it upon yourself to just casually forgive a mistake if it had no impact on you.
Or at least have the decency to let the victim’s family decide, don’t take it upon yourself to just casually forgive a mistake if it had no impact on you.
No? If you robbed me I shouldn’t be able to decide your sentence.
Why? Was the victim entirely innocent? Did it result in permanent injury or death of the victim(s)? Would it have been less dangerous if the one who produced the accident did not drive a car? Was the driver incapacitated by alcohol/drugs/anything else? If the answer to ANY of those is “yes”
I strongly disagree with that, it is unfair to expect people to be infallible, obviously being under the influence is easy to avoid, and so is negligent. But say a mom’s driving and one of her kids stands up and starts doing something distracting just as a cyclist blows through a stop sign? Or one of many million more possible scenarios.
So if a person runs and appears out of nowhere in front of a moving car and it results in them being hit, the driver’s life should be ruined? It’s called accident for a reason, nobody wanted it.
Yeah, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a cyclist blow through a stop sign onto through an intersection where one road doesn’t have a stop sign.
It’s a combination of negligence and vehicular manslaughter.
I have an aunt with six DUIs. After the second, they all become felonies, which are supposed to be 2 years at least in jail. I don’t think she’s ever spent more than a day in jail. Intoxication manslaughter may be worse, but the courts treat alcohol related incidents with kid gloves a LOT of the time.
Is it Wisconsin? People up there get like 16.
Can confirm, from northern Wisconsin. Definitely have seen people with 10+
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My brother spent 3 seperate days in jail for 5 drunk driving charges.
I mean he’s my brother, but lock that idiot up for a while longer, at least.
This creates an incentive to let high earners:wealthy people :off the hook for jail time since they will have to earn money to pay for the support. This of course won’t apply to lower earners which will go to jail.
This is just a debt trap. It won’t help any kids because the kids can’t get money from someone who is in prison, but it does make it harder for people who commit crimes to pay their debt and rejoin society. If the law specifically gave these support payments priority over fines payable to the state I’d feel differently, but the real point of this is to just pile debt on someone who can’t earn money.
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Precisely. Nothing in Texas is supposed to work as advertised. This is to further hunt poor people. Ideally brown ones. Glad I left that rotten state.
Turning jail time into spending money looks a lot like fines being a cost of business. A CEO of a big company could just kill a child’s parents and not even feel the sting, as long as he’s drunk and his weapon is his car.
Bold of you to assume the CEO would be convicted
Fair
It doesn’t seem like this is instead of other punishments, it’s in addition. So this criticism doesn’t really make sense.
cars the best weapon
In many parts of the US, not sure about Texas, child support is based on the parent(s)'(s) income/wealth. The same should apply here, but for the drunk driver’s income/wealth.
The spirit of the law would be to ensure that the change in the money available for the development of the child changes as little as possible after separation of the parents. Under that assumption, the killer would only have to provide as much as the victim would have if they had separated.
Why would that be the spirit of the law? If the parent suddenly started making more money, the kid would (probably) have more spent on raising them. Why would that same outcome not apply to the parent’s responsibility being suddenly replaced by person who makes more money?
https://lemmy.world/post/1685223
Already a thing.
So now drunk drivers have an incentive to claim it was intentional, not accidental.
The overall idea here is excellent, but it is fundamentally nonsensical to only apply it to drunk drivers and not all killers.
I guess… but that’s a risky move in a state that’s pretty gung-ho with the death penalty. I think most would rather pay the child support than admit to second or first degree murder
You think first degree murder would be a better financial decision than manslaughter?
Agreed with your second sentence. Though I think the state should step in to help the kids in either instance. If they’re convicted and are in prison it’s trying to get blood from a stone at that point.
This is Texas though. This isn’t about helping anyone it’s just grandstanding for votes.
For some people, prison could be a better alternative to becoming homeless due to an even smaller paycheck. I don’t think the idea of it is as outlandish as you think.
What I want to know is if they have to keep paying if the kids never graduate. It’s Texas so it seems like the odds are pretty high you could be paying for some dudes kids until they either get shot in a bar or do a lethal fentanyl hit.
Child support continues until the child is no longer a child (18).
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Someone might want to fix the summary. In bold it says 18 or when they graduate from high school *whichever is later *.
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That reminds me of something that may not at all be true (please correct me if I’m wrong) I was told it, many years ago, by a person who lived for a few years in China.
She said that there was a law there (in the '90s at least) that if you injured someone accidentally to the point that they were disabled, you had to pay their disability as long as they lived (or you die, whichever is first). BUT if you accidentally killed someone (not murdered) then you just had to pay their family a fine.
The fine was much less than a lifetime of disability payments, so there was incentive, if you accidentally injured someone (especially a child with a lot of years to live) to just go all the way and kill them as long as it could feasibly look like an accident.
A classic example of perverse incentives. Same for endangered animals. The most rational self-interest thing you can do is you see some endangered animal on your land is to kill it. Since if the government becomes aware of it you will lose control of your property and it will lose resell value.
You want to make things such that doing the morally correct, or at least the correct for the greater good, is always the best option for people to choose.
Actually one of the few sane things that Texas has done.
This is not a terrible law but maybe we should design our infrastructure such that injuries are rare rather than the “Accidents are common and you have to pay more if some of the people are alive after the accident” model we currently use.
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It’s not a punishment in this case, it’s a form of restitution to help provide financial security to families that have lost a caretaker/breadwinner.
Restitution is a financial punishment that follows the offender for years and often decades after the fact. Many times offenders on parole or probation are required to remain on probation until restitution is fully repaid, and while on probation/parole it’s extremely easy to have your probation/parole revoked (meaning you get sent straight back to prison, often on fresh charges), plus the requirements for the probation & parole can absolutely violate their rights because “it’s a privilege to be on probation/parole instead of prison”
This is all not mention the difficulty they have getting work after they leave the prison/jail with a felony conviction. There’s a reason so many ex-cons operate businesses, it’s because it’s often the most viable path to a living income
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I don’t really care in this case, I mean if you chose to risk other people’s lives by drunk driving then who cares if it’s difficult to afford. I honestly think drunk driving is way too tolerated. Also it could also be tied to income, so you pay more if you have a higher income.
The only issue I can see with this, is if you have killed someone while drunk driving isn’t there going to be a good chance the kid will already have reached adulthood by the time the drunk driver is released? That and this does just seem like a way for the state to avoid financially supporting those families. So for those two reasons the law is flawed I would say
these crashes are not “accidents” if infrastructure is designed that way. the design/engineering element make these crashes “features” of the design.
You’re wrong it’s a terrible law, it gets filed under creul and unusual
Or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later.”
So don’t graduate and get paid for life?
You aren’t too good at reading are you?
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Later implies that both must occur to be free of child support
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Fuck drunk drivers
Just know, all humans are terrible drivers (myself included). A drunk driver is like putting a toddler being the wheel.
We need better public transit. Period. Get cars out of human hands.
Not to disagree with more public transport, but public transport is also in human hands
Fewer, however
Yes agree. Drunk driving is bad but bad driving is also bad. Driving in general is also kind of bad. Focusing on the DUI isn’t really the solution.
Por que no los dos?
So…if you actually want to have fewer drunk driving incidents…and fewer crashes in general, we know how. You have less car centric infrastructure. Of course youre gonna have drunk driving when bars have required minimum parking when being built.
Yeah this won’t stop a single accident - and it will probably not result in more money for the kids, too since many people won’t be able to pay from prison
But at least the government won’t have to drop a penny. Working as intended!
