The state attorney general’s office has prosecuted thousands of parents for failing to pay child support, but none of those has been as “outrageous” as the claims — and children — piling up for Howard Veal.
The Muskegon man has fathered 23 children with 14 women, and is more than $533,000 in arrears in his child-support payments, according to the attorney general’s office, which has been pushing a case against Veal — tied to two of those children — in Kent County Circuit Court.
On Thursday, Judge Dennis Leiber sentenced Veal, 44, to two to four years in prison for failure to pay child support, a felony. With this sentence, the judge far exceeded the state guidelines, which called for Veal to get no more than six months in the county jail.