SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT – DCSE CASES – LONG-SINCE-EMANCIPATED CHILD – ARREARAGES – CONTEMPT – APPEALS. Did you really have any doubt that it would work this way? Because it’s all very logical and legal, you see. The child was no longer a child as of 2002, and in 2008 the DCSE sought a contempt Rule for failure to pay toward an arrearage. When the JDR court threw out this litigation, the DCSE of course appealed to the circuit court, which held this father in civil contempt for an arrearage of $13,534.85 as of July 2009 and sent him to jail for a year. That July 27, 2009 Order specified that the $13,534.85 amount would begin accruing interest if not paid and purged by August 5. That was an inducement, but also it could not have been too pleasant in the Prince William jail in late July and the man paid under protest on July 31 and was released, secure in the knowledge that he could always go to the Court of Appeals, and promptly filed his appeal there. But of course, the Court of Appeals explained as it summarily dismissed his appeal, his payment of the money meant the whole thing was moot and there was no live case or controversy. No more support is accruing on an emancipated child, and no, he doesn’t get back any of that support that he paid the mother for those adult years. Briggman v. Commonwealth, DSS, DCSE, unpublished, 24 VLW 1314 (4/27/10).