SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT – STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS – JUDGMENTS – TWENTY-YEAR STATUTE APPLIES. Yes, the statute making every child support installment a judgment from the minute it is due and unpaid means what it says, the Virginia Supreme Court points out. But for that very reason, the Supreme Court tells the DCSE in Adcock v. Commonwealth, ___ Va. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 26 VLW 670 (11/4/11), the general 20-year statute of limitations on judgments, §8.01-251, means exactly what it says too, and it applies to these judgments going back 20 years or more. Nothing in the statute makes an exception or says it doesn’t apply, and therefore a “deadbeat Dad” does not have to pay them. This is all nothing but statutory interpretation, the Supreme Court says, and it is straightforward and simple. The only quirk is the established legal principle that a statute of limitations does not apply to an ongoing judgment that you will have to pay future child support, but those payments that were missed and became instant “judgments” against the payor parent are not that, and just like any other judgments, after 20 years they became uncollectible.
