8-1 Section 8-Child Support Enforcement Program
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8-1 SECTION 8-CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT PROGRAM CONTENTS Background Overview Demographic Trends Program Trends The Federal Role The State Role The Child Support Enforcement Process Locating Absent Parents Establishing Paternity Establishing Orders Reviewing and Modifying Orders Establishing and Enforcing Medical Support Collecting Child Support Interstate Enforcement Private Collection Activities State Collection and Disbursement of Support Payments Bankruptcy and Child Support Enforcement Automated Systems Audits and Financial Penalties Assignment and Distribution of Child Support Collections Distribution of Payments While the Family Receives Public Assistance Distribution of Payments After the Family Leaves Public Assistance Funding of State Programs How Effective is Child Support Enforcement? Impact on Taxpayers Impact on Poverty Impact on National Child Support Payments Legislative History 104th Congress 105th Congress 106th Congress Statistical Tables References 8-2 BACKGROUND OVERVIEW In 1950, when only a small minority of children were in female-headed families, the Federal Government took its first steps into the child support arena. Congress amended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) law by requiring State welfare agencies to notify law enforcement officials when benefits were being furnished to a child who had been abandoned by one of his or her parents. Presumably, local officials would then undertake to locate nonresident parents and make them pay child support. From 1950 to 1975, the Federal Government confined its child support efforts to these welfare children. With this exception, most Americans thought that child support establishment and collection was a domestic relations issue that should be dealt with at the State level by the courts. By the early 1970s, however, Congress recognized that the composition of the AFDC caseload had changed drastically. In earlier years the majority of children needed financial assistance because their fathers had died; by the 1970s, the majority needed aid because their parents were separated, divorced, or never married. The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) and Paternity Establishment program, enacted in 1975, was a response by Congress to reduce public expenditures on welfare by obtaining support from noncustodial parents on an ongoing basis, to help non-AFDC families get support so they could stay off public assistance, and to establish paternity for children born outside marriage so child support could be obtained for them. The 1975 legislation (Public Law 93-647) added a new part D to title IV of the Social Security Act. This statute, as amended, authorizes Federal matching funds to be used for enforcing support obligations by locating nonresident parents, establishing paternity, establishing child support awards, and collecting child support payments. Since 1981, child support agencies have also been permitted to collect spousal support on behalf of custodial parents, and in 1984 they were required to petition for medical support as part of most child support orders. Basic responsibility for administering the program is left to States, but the Federal Government plays a major role in: dictating the major design features of State programs; funding, monitoring and evaluating State programs; providing technical assistance; and giving assistance to States in locating absent parents and obtaining support payments. The program requires the provision of child support enforcement (CSE) services for both welfare and nonwelfare families and requires States to publicize frequently, through public service announcements, the availability of child support enforcement services, together with information about the application fee and a telephone number or address to obtain additional information. Local family and domestic courts and administrative agencies handle 8-3 the actual establishment and enforcement of child support obligations according to Federal, State, and local laws. The child support program generally does not provide services aimed at other issues between parents, such as property settlement, custody, and access to children. These issues are handled by local courts with the help of private attorneys. Any parent who needs help in locating an absent parent, establishing paternity, establishing a support obligation, or enforcing a support obligation may apply for CSE services. Parents receiving benefits (or who formerly received benefits) under the successor program to AFDC (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF), the federally assisted foster care program, or the Medicaid Program, automatically receive CSE services. Services are free to such recipients, but others (i.e., nonwelfare clients) are charged up to $25 for services. States can charge fees based on a sliding scale, pay fees out of State funds, or recover the fees from the noncustodial parent. In 1996, Public Law 104-193, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, abolished AFDC and related programs and replaced them with the TANF block grant program. Under the new law, each State must operate a CSE Program meeting Federal requirements in order to be eligible for TANF funds. In addition to abolishing AFDC, Public Law 104-193 made about 50 changes to the CSE Program, many of them major. These changes include requiring States to increase the percentage of noncustodial parents identified, establishing an integrated, automated network linking all States to information about the location and assets of parents, requiring States to implement more enforcement techniques, and revising the rules governing the distribution of past due (arrearage) child support payments to former recipients of public assistance. DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS The need for an effective child support program is clearly supported by a brief review of the demographic trends of the American family. By 2001, there were an estimated 11.5 million single-parent families with children under age 18; about 9.2 million (80 percent) were maintained by the mother and roughly 2.3 million by the father (Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau, 2002, Table 17). It appears that the rate of growth in the number of single parents has stabilized. The average annual percent increase in the number of one-parent families was 2.1 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 2.8 percent from 1980 to 1990 as compared with 8.9 percent from 1970 to 1980. In 2001, one-parent families comprised nearly 30 percent of all families. The corresponding share of single-parent families in 1970 was 11 percent. In 2000, about 43 percent of the mothers had never been married, 35 percent were divorced, 18 percent were separated from their spouse, and about 4 percent were widowed (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001, p. 8). 8-4 Of equal concern, dynamic estimates indicated that at least half of all children born in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s would live with a single parent before reaching adulthood. For black children, the projection was about 80 percent (Bumpass, 1984). Currently, about 27 percent of the 72 million children under age 18 living in the United States reside in a one-parent family. Although the number of families with a mother who has divorced has tripled since 1970, the number with a mother who has never married has increased almost sixteen-fold from 248,000 to 4,181,000. In these latter cases, paternity must be determined before the other parent has a legal obligation to financially support the child. The nearly 4.2 million families maintained by a never-married mother in 2000 represent a major concern because only about two-thirds of the children in these families have had their paternity established; for the other one-third, a child support obligation cannot be established until a paternity determination is made. Poverty is endemic among mother-headed families. In 2001, 33.6 percent of the 9.2 million families maintained solely by a mother with children under 18 had incomes below the poverty threshold (Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau, 2002, Table 17). About 11 percent of these families were poor despite the fact that the mother worked year round, full time. In sum, an unprecedented number of children live in single-parent homes, about 34 percent are poor, and many lack adequate or any support from the nonresident parent. PROGRAM TRENDS In response to these demographic trends, the Federal-State child support program grew rapidly. By 2001, about 60 percent of all child support eligible families were actually receiving government funded child support services. Most of the information in this chapter applies to the families receiving these government services. Table 8-1 summarizes trends for the child support program since 1978. In 2002, $5.2 billion was spent by State child support programs to collect $20.1 billion in child support. The combined Federal-State program had 61,797 employees. A sum of $3.88 was collected for every dollar of administrative expense, up by about 34 percent from the low point of only $2.89 in 1982. In addition, in 2002 1.5 million paternities were established or acknowledged; almost 1.2 million support orders were established; and 7.8 million cases had collections. Moreover, in 2001 330,000 families were removed from TANF because of child support collections (Office of Child Support, 2003a). These program trends demonstrate that more and more positive child support outcomes have been achieved by the Federal-State program. But whether these trends indicate program success is