Not making your child support payments? You could soon get a knock on your door!

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Nearly half of all children in Milwaukee County rely – in one way or another – on child support.  When parents don’t pay up, the consequences may be more far-reaching than you think.  Now, there is a program in Milwaukee County that’s cracking down on deadbeat parents.

“Go out and knock on the door.  A simple knock on the door," Maureen Atwell said.

Atwell says this program is a game-changer.

“We’re not looking for people who failed to pay their child support because they were too poor to pay or just lost their job.  We’re looking for people who really have the resources and ability to pay child support and they just choose not to," Atwell said.

Atwell is an Assistant District Attorney overseeing the "Felony Failure to Support" unit.

She deals with up to 60 open cases at a time!

“If someone fails to pay their child support for a few months, it can be any number of reasons for that.  They could have lost their job, a sick relative or just fell on hard times.  There are a whole bunch of reasons. If someone failed to pay their child support for 10 years, less likely there is a good reason," Atwell said.

That's why Milwaukee County is taking a “boots on the ground” approach to going after deadbeats.

Part of this year’s County Budget included funds for two District Attorney Investigators.  It’s part of a joint program between the D.A.’s Office and the County’s Child Support Services division.

“We’re going to be identifying cases that really, we think, will warrant more of a closer look. When a case starts to raise red flags, when we’re hearing perhaps income is being hidden or if we’re hearing from custodial parents, ‘He’s not making support payments but at the same time has a lake property somewhere,’ you know, that’s something that we’re going to want to take a look at," Jim Sullivan, Director of Child Support Services for Milwaukee County said.

That’s when the two investigators steps in.  They essentially act as a separate branch of law enforcement reporting directly to the District Attorney.  They’re able to devote time to investigate claims made by custodial parents.

“We could hear what the mothers were telling us, but it was very hard to get information first hand as to the assets that these people had," Atwell said.

The duo can also round up those with warrants.

“If you’ve got a criminal case and you try to run off, they’ll find out,” Sullivan warns.

FOX6 is asked not to show their faces because a lot of the work they do is undercover.

One case they investigated involved a man with several outstanding warrants -- including felony counts of bail jumping and five counts of failure to support a child.

This is just one of about a dozen cases the D.A. Investigators have been working on since they started a little more than a month ago.

For single mom Danielle McBeth, it’s the kind of “game” she remembers playing with her ex.

“If he knew he was going to go to jail, he’d come up with the money out of nowhere,” McBeth said.

The father of McBeth’s five-year-old son John, who has autism, went years without paying child support and ended up owing McBeth $1,400.

“He has money to smoke cigarettes and smoke weed and do whatever else recreational that he does – but never any money toward diapers or nothing on birthdays or Christmas," McBeth said.

"This not only supports families, it helps to protect further expenses to the taxpayers.  When people don’t meet their responsibilities, taxpayers end up having to meet those responsibilities for them," Sullivan said.

Sullivan says the total cost of the new program is a little more than $200,000.  By getting deadbeats to pay up, Sullivan says more families can lean off of welfare programs.  He says taxpayers end up benefiting in the long run.

“The return on investment is between $5 and $6 for every dollar expended on the program," Sullivan said.

So for those who think they can keep getting away without paying child support, Sullivan has a warning:

“People will be seeing our investigators," Sullivan said.

The next knock could be at your door!

“You need to step up.  You need to be a parent,” McBeth said.

Because the D.A. Investigators have only been on the job for a short time, all of the cases they are working on remain open.  But they’re already having an impact.

Atwell says three of the investigators' cases were in court May 8th, 2014.