"Absent parent" is a legal term that may define the way some parents relate or fail to relate to their children. These parents are not the custodial parent, or the parent with whom a child lives. Instead, they are non-custodial parents who do not reside with the child.
There are a couple of ways the term absent parent can be used. Once child custody arrangements are determined, the parent who does not live with the child, and who usually only has visiting rights without sharing custody, is the absent parent. This parent can still be involved in a child’s life and pay child support, but he or she doesn’t live with the child, so he or she is absent or missing from the child’s daily life.
Another form of absent parent is one who is completely missing from the child’s life, fully abandoning the child and having nothing to do with him or her. This includes acts such as refusing to make child support payments or refusal to participate in the child's life.
If an absent parent does not provide child support, and in the absence of a mutual and voluntary arrangement between the parents, an absent parent may owe back child support at a later time. The absent parent may be responsible for some support payments if the parent and child have depended on social services like welfare. To avoid this, parents have to go to court and sever the parental rights of the uninvolved parent. This same requirement may exist if at a later point, the custodial parent remarries and has a spouse who would like to adopt the child of the absent parent.
When an absent parent needs to pay missed child support payments, courts can seize assets to help make these payments or garnish paychecks. When parents purposely avoid fulfilling their responsibility to their children, custodial parents can use investigators or a variety of services to locate them. Once found, absent parents usually will need to appear in court to discuss their failure to pay adequate child support and are generally given information on new payments and how they will be deducted.
