Getting the child support I'm owed for my child

(Dubuque, IA)

I've had an order for child support in place for 5 1/2 years now. I have received a few payments over the years, but never regularly and almost never full payments. My ex-husband only is ordered to pay $285 per month. In the whole year of 2010, I received $186. So not even one full month's payment in 12 months. The only reason I got what I did was spending months hunting down his employment information, which I provided to Child Support, and then he quit his job after his paychecks were deducted. This has been the cycle. Once he is "found" he quits the job.

His license has been sanctioned, and he simply tells me he doesn't care and is happy to drive without a license. At one point, I asked he be taken up on contempt charges. He called and said he would pay $5 a month, and the charges were dropped. He never did make that $5 payment. He bought a house and put it in his girlfriends name so my attorney couldn't put a lien on it. He knows exactly how to cheat the system. I have offered to forgive all current and past support in exchange for him allowing my husband (who raises and supports the child in question) to adopt my daughter, but he refuses even though he only chooses to see her once or twice a year. He lives just one hour away. So he uses his visitation rights to manipulate me, refuses to pay support and cheats the system, makes my life and my daughter's life miserable, threatens me and my family, and yet I'm told nothing can be done?