(Memphis) It’s more than a misunderstanding.
One family is calling it ‘defamation of character’ and ‘libel.’
Their loved one’s picture is in this week’s issue of Just Busted with the title ‘deadbeat parent.’
The problem is, the family says Chrishun Moore wasn’t a deadbeat, and he died two years ago.
Moore was a musician, a Memphis rapper, and his family says, a devoted father who died from a heart condition at 21 years old.
“He had a heart attack at age 21?” asked reporter Sabrina Hall.
“Yes. He was diagnosed at birth,” said his mother, Shauna Jones.
Moore died two days after his second child was born.
It was soon after that, his family says, the State starting going after him for child support.
Jones says it happened when the baby’s mother applied for State aid.
“You know TennCare, food stamps, that’s when they want them to put the parent on child support so the State goes after the child support to reimburse them on what they’ve helped the parent with.”
Since then, Moore’s family says they’ve been confronted by sheriff’s deputies with warrants for his arrest.
The family has submitted proof of his death to juvenile court and still, just this week, two years after his death, his face is on Just Busted, a newspaper labeling Moore as a deadbeat parent
“That’s heartbreaking,” said Jones. “You get texts in the middle of the night. You wake up to see this. It’s heartbreaking.”
“You have him looking like a criminal and he was far from that. He was a wonderful person,” said P Moses, a friend and mentor to the musician.
The rapper even wrote a song about his devotion to fatherhood just months before he passed away.
Moore’s mother wants juvenile court to get the message that he doesn’t owe child support, and certainly not now after death.
“What more can we prove? Do we need to take them to the gravesite and show them where he is buried to stop this or what?”
Juvenile court tell WREG it’s not its fault, that Maximus, a private company, handles child support collections and enforcement for Shelby County and it was its responsibility to inform the court that Moore had passed away.