They simply can not afford to go to court and fight for their right to be an active part of the lives of their children.
Besides the Offices of Child Support Enforcement, custodial mothers have an array of resources to help them collect the child support owed to them. Some services are free of charge and yet others charge a fee. I did a search on www.yahoo.com for child support and, in just the first search page, I found a non-profit organization that represents the child support community (which they state is a workforce of over 60,000), six fee-for-service organizations that enforce child support orders, the webpage for the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, and even a webpage that explains how to look at child support guidelines for each state. .
I also did a search for child visitation at www.yahoo.com and on the first page I found just one link to a website that offered limited free help and strategies to winning visitation and custody. The other links were legal websites, sites selling books on the topic, or research sites delving into various aspects of visitation. Upon searching more thoroughly, there is not one federally funded office that I found, much less have heard of, that regulates the custodial parent's actions in regards to their use of the funds that are supposed to go to their children, and their actions in regard to access and visitation between the children and the absent parent. .
According to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, states, family courts, and non-profit organizations can, however, apply for federal funds to establish access and visitation programs which are supposed to improve children's access to their non-custodial parent (http://www.cfda.gov/public/viewprog.asp?progid=1294). Only 54 grants were made in 2002. In addition, only 54 grants were estimated to be granted in 2003 and 62 grants in 2004 (Catalog). Keep in mind that one state can have several grants.