"Deadbeat dad" is the gender-specific slang term used to describe a father who willfully ignores and evades a court order to provide financial support for his children. Unlike typical slang terminology, deadbeat dad is a term that is used freely in and out of court. The term is predominately used by those employed in child support enforcement agencies throughout the United States. Consider the fact that even deadbeat dads, as despicable as they are, understand the term's connotation and attach no pride to its stigma. To the mothers of the children whose fathers “opted-out” of their parental responsibilities, a no more appropriately descriptive term has ever been coined.

In all fairness, it is important to make note of the word “willfully,” or any word meaning the same, as it may appear in deadbeat dad definitions. Deadbeat dad exceptions do exist and might include, for example, a father who would like to pay child support but, for some oddly legitimate reason, can not hold down a job, or a doting dad who meekly makes weak but timely $100.00 US Dollars (USD) payments on a monthly $400.00 USD court order, or the weekend dad who, although he can’t scrape up those payments, always shows up on Friday for the kids. Certainly, this behavior is inexcusable and smacks with deadbeat familiarity, but it is, in all fairness, not befitting of the title. True deadbeat dads are notorious for more than their huge support arrearages. Stereotypically, they are devoid of any kind of emotional remorse or resolve, and they tend to maintain rather sociopathic excuses for the financial noncompliance. Deadbeat dads simply do not like the rules and many will move, remarry, change names, and work for cash to avoid any and all parental responsibility.

California’s 1992 precedent requiring companies with five or more employees to report names and social security numbers of all new hires was the first major step toward actual child support enforcement ever made at the state level in the United States. In 1996, the US Congress followed suit, making the California program national and requiring all states to create same-standard systems. The Internet provides lists, state-by-state, of the most wanted deadbeat dads, and most states will suspend driving privileges and hold state tax refunds to offset unpaid court ordered support.

Thankfully, child support enforcement agencies across the nation have banned together in no-tolerance, no-immunity harmony to catch child support offenders of every caliber. Deadbeat dad’s can no longer cross state lines in hopes of hiding from child support orders and federal deadbeat dad databases are slowly smoking out the worst offenders.