Throughout the seventies and eighties, the law was amended and refined, establishing systems and procedures that made it easier for states to secure support payments from non-custodial parents. Title IV-D authorized collection procedures, such as mandatory income withholding and income execution, as well as expedited systems for establishing and enforcing support orders, such as income tax refund interceptions and property liens. Most significantly, the act required states to create and regularly review standardized guidelines for establishing support amounts.
It also required Courts to use these guidelines in setting support amounts. Legislation enacted in , the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, called for the development of a number of social services programs aimed towards working with fathers to pay child support.
The Child Support Enforcement Program CSEP is jointly administered at the federal, State, and local level by the child support enforcement and the civil legal criminal justice systems. Department of Justice. States are required to provide support enforcement services to parents in order to receive funding. States can also receive grants from the Bureau of Justice Assistance of the U.
Department of Justice for the purpose of developing, implementing and enforcing criminal interstate child support legislation, and for the coordination of criminal interstate child support enforcement efforts. Show updates Prior law requirements for mandatory wage withholding in cases where payments were in arrears applied to orders that were not subject to immediate wage withholding.
States were required to provide for immediate wage withholding for all support orders initially issued on or after January 1, , regardless of whether a parent had applied for CSE services. No new power was granted to the states to require participation by noncustodial parents. The Secretary of HHS was required to collect and maintain state-by-state statistics on paternity establishment, location of absent parents for the purpose of establishing a support obligation, enforcement of a child support obligation, and location of absent parents for the purpose of enforcing or modifying an established obligation.
Each state was mandated, in the administration of any law involving the issuance of a birth certificate, to require each parent to furnish his or her Social Security number SSN , unless the state found good cause for not requiring the parent to furnish it.
The SSN was required to be in the birth record but not on the birth certificate, and the use of the SSN obtained through the birth record was restricted to CSE purposes, except under certain circumstances. Each state was required to inform families receiving AFDC of the amount of support collected on their behalf on a monthly basis, rather than annually as provided under prior law.
States had the option to provide quarterly notification if the Secretary of HHS determined that monthly reporting imposed an unreasonable administrative burden. This provision was effective four years after the date of enactment. The Medicaid transition benefit in child support cases was extended from October 1, to October 1, Congress was concerned that the IV-D program, created in as a federal-state partnership primarily to recoup welfare debt, was falling short of its mandate to successfully locate noncustodial parents, establish paternity and support orders, and enforce those orders.
Interstate Commission [on Child Support] issued its report and recommendations [in ], the program has matured into one that does reasonably well at collecting support, and is now focused on supportive measures for both custodial and non-custodial parents to ensure that they have the tools with which to provide financial, and emotional, support to their children.
As the next wave of changes moves the program to a more holistic, neutral approach to supporting families, it is well to remember and understand how the successes over the past twenty years are providing the platform for our next level of program reforms. A federal income tax refund offset was not permissible if the relevant child had reached the age of majority, even if the arrearages accrued while the child was still a minor, unless the child now adult had a current support order and was disabled, as defined under the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance OASDI or Supplemental Security Income SSI programs.
The IRS offset could be used for spousal support when spousal and child support are included in the same support order. The existence of the Interstate Child Support Commission was extended from July 1, , to July 1, , and the commission was required to submit its report no later than May 1, The commission was allowed to hire its own staff.
The act also required states to adopt laws to ensure the compliance of health insurers and employers in carrying out court or administrative orders for medical child support and included a provision that prohibited health insurers from denying coverage to children who were not living with the covered individual or born outside marriage.
Nonetheless, P. It required tribunals of each state to enforce, according to such state's terms, a child support order issued by a court defined to also include an administrative authority of another state, if 1 the issuing state's tribunal had subject matter jurisdiction to hear the matter and enter an order; 2 the issuing state's tribunal had personal jurisdiction over the parties; and 3 reasonable notice and the opportunity to be heard was given to the parties.
The issuing tribunal retained continuing, exclusive jurisdiction over the order as long as the child or at least one of the parties resided in the issuing state, unless the tribunal of another state, acting in accordance with P. However, the power to modify another state's support order was restricted. In addition, child support and alimony payments were made priority claims and custodial parents were able to appear in bankruptcy court to protect their interests without paying a fee or meeting any local rules for attorney appearances.
The majority of these enhancements were patterned after successful CSE initiatives pioneered by the States. The summary below organizes these changes into several major categories. The rules governing how child support collections are distributed among the federal government, state governments, and families that are on or have been on welfare were substantially changed. Instead, payments to families that leave welfare are more generous.
By October 1, , states had to distribute to the family current support and arrearages that accrued after the family left welfare before the state could be reimbursed for welfare costs. By October 1, , states also were required to distribute to the family arrearages that accrued before the family began receiving welfare before the state could be reimbursed. These new rules, however, did not apply to collections made by intercepting tax refunds.
The result of these changes was that states were required to pay a higher fraction of child support collections on arrearages to families that have left welfare by making those payments to families first before the state. The new law required that if this change in policy resulted in states losing money relative to current law, the federal government would reimburse states for any losses. This section of the law also contained clarifications of the ''fill-the-gap'' policy so that states that operated such programs could continue to do so, provided safeguards against unauthorized use of paternity or child support information, required states to inform parents of proceedings in which child support might be established or modified, and required states to provide parents with a copy of any changes in the child support order within 14 days.
The federal government made major new investments to help states acquire, automate, and use information. First, states had to establish a registry of all CSE cases and all other new or modified child support cases in the state. The registry had to contain specified minimum data elements for all cases. For cases enforced by the state CSE program, the registry also had to contain a wide array of information that was to be regularly updated, including the amount of each child support order and a record of payments and arrearages.
In the case of orders that included income withholding but were not in the CSE system, the state also had to keep records of payments. In CSE cases, this information was used both to enforce and update child support orders by conducting matches with information in other state and federal data systems and programs.
Second, states were mandated to create a centralized automated disbursement unit to which child support payments were paid and from which they were distributed, and that contained accurate records of child support payments. In CSE cases requiring income withholding, within two days of receipt of information about a support order and a parent's source of income the automated system had to send an income withholding notice to employers.
Third, states had to require employers to send information on new employees to a centralized State Directory of New Hires within 20 days of the date of hire; employers that report electronically or by magnetic tape could file twice per month.
States had to routinely match the new hire information, which had to be entered into the state data base within five days, against the State Case Registry using Social Security numbers. In the case of matches, within two days of entry of data in the Registry, employers had to be notified of the amount to be withheld and where to send the money. Within three days, new employee information had to be reported by states to the National Directory of New Hires.
States using private contractors could share the new hire information with the contractors, subject to privacy safeguards. States were required to have laws clarifying that child support orders not subject to income withholding were to immediately become subject to income withholding without a hearing if arrearages occur. The law included rules that clarified how employers were to accomplish income withholding in interstate cases and established a uniform definition of income.
Employers had to remit withheld income to the State Disbursement Unit within seven days of the normal date of payment to the employee.
All state and federal child support agencies must have access to the motor vehicle and law enforcement locator systems of all states. The new law clarified that the purposes for which the FPLS could be used included establishing parentage; setting, modifying or enforcing support orders; and enforcing custody or visitation orders. In addition to being the repository for information from every state case registry and state directory of new hires information on new hires had to be entered into the FPLS within two days of receipt , the FPLS had to match information from state case registries with information from state new hire directories at least every two days and report matches to state agencies within two days.
All federal agencies also had to report information, including wages, on all employees except those involved in security activities if they could potentially be compromised to the FPLS for use in matching against state child support cases.
State unemployment agencies had to report quarterly wage and unemployment compensation information to the FPLS. However, the HHS Secretary also had to ensure both that fees were established for agencies that used FPLS information and that the information was used only for authorized purposes.
The Secretaries of HHS and Labor were required to work together to develop a cost-effective means of accessing information in the various directories established by the law.
All states were required to have procedures for recording the Social Security numbers of applicants on the application for professional licenses, commercial drivers' licenses, occupational licenses, and marriage licenses; states had to record Social Security numbers in the records of divorce decrees, child support orders, paternity orders, and death certificates. Provisions recommended by the commissioners on procedures in interstate cases were included in the law. States were not required to use UIFSA in all cases if they determined that using other interstate procedures would be more effective.
The law also clarified the definition of a child's home state, made several revisions to ensure that full faith and credit laws could be applied consistently with UIFSA, and clarified the rules regarding which child support order states had to honor when there was more than one order.
States were required to have laws that permitted them to send orders to and receive orders from other states. Within five days of receiving a case from another state, responding states had to match the case against its databases, take appropriate action if a match occurred, and send any collections to the initiating state. The HHS Secretary had to issue forms that states had to use for withholding income, imposing liens, and issuing administrative subpoenas in interstate cases.
States had to adopt laws that provided the CSE agency with the authority to initiate a series of expedited procedures without the necessity of obtaining an order from any other administrative or judicial tribunal.
These actions included ordering genetic testing; issuing subpoenas; requiring public and private employers and other entities to provide information on employment, compensation, and benefits or be subject to penalties; obtaining access to vital statistics, state and local tax records, real and personal property records, records of occupational and professional licenses, business records, employment security and public assistance records, motor vehicle records, corrections records, customer records of utilities and cable TV companies pursuant to an administrative subpoena, and records of financial institutions; directing the obligor to make payments to the CSE agency in public assistance or income withholding cases; ordering income withholding in CSE cases; securing assets to satisfy arrearages, including the seizure of lump sum payments, judgments, and settlements; and increasing the monthly support due to make payments on arrearages.
States were required to have laws that permitted paternity establishment until at least age 18 even in cases previously dismissed because a shorter statute of limitations was in effect. In contested paternity cases, except where barred by state laws or where there was good cause not to cooperate, all parties had to submit to genetic testing at state expense; states could recoup costs from the father if paternity was established. States had to take several actions to promote paternity establishment including creating a simple civil process for voluntary acknowledgment of paternity, maintaining a hospital-based paternity acknowledgment program as well as programs in other state agencies including the birth record agency , and issuing an affidavit of voluntary paternity acknowledgment based on a form developed by the HHS Secretary.
When the child's parents were unmarried, the father's name was not to appear on the birth certificate unless there was an acknowledgment or adjudication of paternity. Signed paternity acknowledgments had to be considered a legal finding of paternity unless rescinded within 60 days; thereafter, acknowledgments could be challenged only on the basis of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact, with the burden of proof on the challenger.
Results of genetic testing had to be admissible in court without foundation or other testimony unless objection was made in writing. State law had to establish either a rebuttable or conclusive presumption of paternity when genetic testing indicated a threshold probability of paternity. States had to require issuance of temporary support orders if paternity was indicated by genetic testing or other clear and convincing evidence.
Bills for pregnancy, childbirth, and genetic testing had to be admissible in judicial proceedings without foundation testimony and were required to constitute prima facie evidence of costs incurred for such services. Fathers had to have a reasonable opportunity to initiate a paternity action. Voluntary acknowledgments of paternity and adjudications of paternity had to be filed with the state registry of birth records for matches with the State Case Registry of Child Support Orders and states had to publicize the availability and encourage the use of procedures for voluntary establishment of paternity and child support.
Individuals who applied for public assistance had to provide specific identifying information about the noncustodial parent and had to appear at interviews, hearings, and other legal proceedings. States had to have good cause and other exceptions from these requirements that took into account the best interests of the child. Exceptions could be defined and applied by the state CSE, welfare, or Medicaid agencies. The HHS Secretary was required to develop a proposal for a new child support incentive system and report the details to Congress by March 1, States were given a new option for computing the paternity establishment rate; in addition to the procedure for calculating the rate relative to the CSE caseload, states could calculate the rate relative to all out-of-wedlock births in the state.
States were required to annually review and report to the HHS Secretary information adequate to determine the state's compliance with federal requirements for expedited procedures, timely case processing, and improvement on the performance indicators. The Secretary had to establish, and states had to use, uniform definitions in complying with this requirement.
The Secretary had to use this information to calculate incentive payments and penalties as well as to review compliance with federal requirements. To determine the quality of data reported by states for calculating performance indicators and to assess the adequacy of financial management of the state CSE program, the Secretary had to conduct an audit of every state at least once every three years, and more often if a state failed to meet federal requirements.
States had to establish an automated data system that 1 maintained data necessary to meet federal reporting requirements, 2 calculated state performance for incentives and penalties, and 3 ensured the completeness, reliability, and accuracy of data.
The automated data system also was required to have privacy safeguards. The HHS Secretary was required to provide several new pieces of information to Congress on an annual basis. This new information included the total amount of child support collected, the costs to the federal and state governments of furnishing child support services, and the total amount of support due and collected as well as due and unpaid.
The mandatory three-year review of child support orders was slightly modified to permit states some flexibility in determining which reviews of welfare cases should be pursued and in choosing methods of review; states had to review orders every three years or more often at state option if either parent or the state requested a review in welfare cases or if either parent requested a review in non-welfare CSE cases.
Consumer credit agencies were required to release information on parents who owed child support to CSE agencies that followed several requirements, such as ensuring privacy. Child support enforcement for federal employees, including retirees and military personnel, was substantially revamped and strengthened. As under prior law, federal employees were subject to wage withholding and other actions taken against them by state CSE agencies. Every federal agency was responsible for responding to a state CSE as if the federal agency were a private business.
The head of each federal agency had to designate an agent, whose name and address had to be published annually in the Federal Register , to be responsible for handling child support cases. The agent was required to respond to withholding notices and other matters brought to his or her attention by CSE officials. The definition of income for federal employees was broadened to conform to the general CSE definition and child support claims were given priority in the allocation of federal employee income.
The Secretary of Defense had to establish a central personnel locator service, which had to be updated on a regular basis, that permitted location of every member of the Armed Services. The Secretary of each branch of the military service had to grant leave to facilitate attendance at child support hearings and other child support proceedings. The Secretary of each branch of the Armed Services also had to withhold child support from retirement pay and forward it to state disbursement units.
States had to have laws that permitted the voiding of any transfers of income or property that were made to avoid paying child support. State law had to permit a court or administrative process to issue an order requiring individuals owing past-due support to pay the amount due, follow a plan for repayment, or participate in work activities. States had to periodically report to credit bureaus, after fulfilling due process requirements, the names of parents owing past-due child support.
States also had to have procedures under which liens took effect by operation of law against property for the amount of overdue child support; states had to grant full faith and credit to the liens of other states.
States also were required to have the authority to withhold, suspend, or restrict the use of drivers' licenses, professional and occupational licenses, and recreational licenses of individuals owing past-due child support. In addition, state CSE agencies had to enter into agreements with financial institutions to develop and operate a data match system in which the financial institution supplied, on a quarterly basis, the name, address, and Social Security number of parents identified by the state as owing past-due child support.
In response to a lien or levy from the state, financial institutions were required to surrender or encumber assets of the parent owing delinquent child support. The Internal Revenue Code was amended so that no additional fees could be assessed for adjustments to previously certified amounts for the same obligor. State Department deny, revoke, restrict, or limit the individual's passport. The Secretary of State, working with the Secretary of HHS, was authorized to declare reciprocity with foreign countries for the purposes of establishing and enforcing support orders.
State plans for child support were mandated to include provision for treating requests for services from other nations the same as interstate cases. The U. Bankruptcy Code was amended to ensure that any child support debt that was owed to a state and that was enforceable under the child support section of the Social Security Act Title IV—D could not be discharged in bankruptcy proceedings. A state that has Indian country was allowed to enter into a cooperative agreement with an Indian tribe if the tribe demonstrated it had an established court system that could enter child support and paternity orders; the HHS Secretary was allowed to make direct payments to tribes that had approved CSE plans.
The definition of ''medical child support order'' in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ERISA was expanded to clarify that any judgment, decree, or order that was issued by a court or by an administrative process had the force and effect of law.
All orders enforced by the state CSE agency had to include a provision for health care coverage. If the noncustodial parent changed jobs and the new employer provided health coverage, the state was required to send notice of coverage to the new employer; the notice in effect served to enroll the child in the health plan of the new employer. A formula for dividing the grant money among the states was included. States were required to monitor, evaluate, and report on their programs in accordance with regulations issued by the HHS Secretary.
It clarified that with respect to the suspension of certain licenses for failure to pay child support, recreational licenses included sporting licenses. It also stipulated that no information from the Federal Parent Locator Service was to be disclosed to any person if the state had notified the HHS Secretary that the state had evidence of domestic violence or child abuse, and that disclosure of such information could be harmful to the custodial parent or the child, and made many other technical changes.
The law set specific annual caps on total federal incentive payments and required states to reinvest incentive payments back into the CSE program. The exact amount of a state's incentive payment depended on its level of performance or the rate of improvement over the previous year when compared with other states.
In addition, states were required to meet data quality standards. If states did not meet specified performance measures and data quality standards, they faced federal financial penalties.
It also included provisions related to medical support and privacy protections, and made other minor changes. In addition, the provision clarified the date by which states had to pass laws implementing medical child support provisions to allow time for state legislatures that met biennially to pass laws after final federal regulations were issued in The Secretary of HHS was required to reduce the amount the state would otherwise have received in federal child support payments by the penalty amount for the fiscal year.
In addition, the law provided for coordination of the alternative disbursement unit penalty with the automated systems penalty so that states that failed to implement both the automated data processing requirement and the state disbursement unit requirement were subject to only one alternative penalty. These provisions were designed to improve the ability of the Department of Education to collect on defaulted student loans and grant overpayments.
These provisions were designed to verify the employment and income of persons receiving federal housing assistance. These provisions were designed to determine whether persons receiving unemployment compensation are working. These provisions were designed to help the Department of the Treasury collect nontax debt e. Spending restraint demands difficult choices, yet making those choices is what the American people sent us to Washington to do.
It also simplified CSE distribution rules and extended the "families first" policy by providing incentives to states to encourage them to allow more child support to go to both former welfare families 43 and families still on welfare. James Allen Veteran Vision Equity Act of , required the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide the HHS Secretary with information for comparison with the National Directory of New Hires 45 for income verification purposes in order to determine eligibility for certain veteran benefits and services.
It was the right thing to do to help families in the United States and other countries get what is rightfully theirs. I am grateful to Congress for passing this important implementing legislation. It's a reminder of how the Administration and Congress can work together across party lines to help lead the international community on issues that really matter in peoples' lives. It provided Indian tribes or tribal organizations access to the Federal Parent Locator Service by designating them as "authorized persons.
It required data standardization within the CSE program to improve the ability of two or more systems or entities to exchange information and to correctly use the information that has been exchanged. In addition, it required all states to use electronic processing of automated systems for the collection and disbursement of child support payments via the State Disbursement Unit by the transmission of child support orders and notices to employers for income withholding purposes using uniform formats prescribed by the HHS Secretary and, at the option of the employer, using the electronic transmission methods prescribed by the HHS Secretary.
The federal regulations can be found at 45 C. Parts The CSE agency may charge this fee to the applicant i. In addition, a state may at its option recover costs in excess of the application fee. Such recovery of costs may be either from the custodial parent or the noncustodial parent.
Although tribes were not specifically included in the CSE statute until the welfare reform law, several tribes had negotiated agreements e. The welfare reform law P. See Table 4, p. That's why we're going to continue to advance legislation to reform our nation's welfare programs. Along the way we will focus on modern anti-poverty solutions proven to help move Americans from government benefit checks to real paychecks and the unlimited opportunity our people deserve," U. Congressional Record , v.
Long, p. President Gerald R. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. President William J. Out of the six "stand-alone" child support bills as denoted by the phrase "Child Support" in their titles, only three had recorded votes, the other three were passed by voice vote or unanimous consent. The discussions of P. Before , many noncustodial parents were able to avoid paying child support to custodial parents by leaving their state of residence.
Since each state had its own laws, it was relatively easy to avoid prosecution for nonpayment. A custodial parent trying to obtain child support from the noncustodial parent who was residing in another state would have to file with the court in that state. This usually was an expensive and time-consuming process.
Most parents simply gave up without ever collecting the child support owed to them. After passage of URESA, the court system of one state had the authority to enforce the child support orders of another state, and noncustodial parents who moved to another state could not as easily avoid paying child support. The FPLS is an assembly of systems operated by the Office of Child Support Enforcement OCSE in the Department of Health and Human Services HHS , to assist states in locating noncustodial parents, putative fathers, and custodial parents for the establishment of paternity and child support obligations, as well as the enforcement and modification of orders for child support, custody, and visitation.
The FPLS assists federal and state agencies in identifying overpayments and fraud, and assists with assessing benefits. Note: Disposable earnings is the amount of earnings left after legally required deductions e. Deductions not required by law e. On August 1, , the Senate agreed to the conference report on H. Record Vote No: Ten years later in , P. On October 3, , the House passed the bill S.
On October 7, , the Senate agreed to the House amendment by voice vote. On October 5, , the House passed S. GAO's report stated: "While the federal role is substantial—most program funding is federal—child support enforcement is very much a state activity.
Today, states face common barriers such as increasing workloads that outpace resources, inadequate computer systems, and fragmented authority and unstandardized procedures among others.
In response, states have developed a number of strategies, including augmenting their staffs with volunteers and contracting with private collection agencies, improving automation to help staff be more productive, and using innovative enforcement techniques. Some of the techniques various states have adopted are 1 requiring employers to report newly hired employees so parents who owe child support can be located, 2 using central lien indexes and tax record matching so parents' assets can be located, and 3 revoking driver's and professional licenses to encourage parents to pay what they owe.
Many welfare reform proposals would further expand child support enforcement. Unless OCSE takes steps to strengthen its leadership and management of its current program, it may have difficulty implementing any new responsibilities.
Employers are required by P. Contrary to its name, the National Directory of New Hires includes more than just information on new employees. It includes information on 1 all newly hired employees, compiled from state reports and reports from federal employers , 2 the quarterly wage reports of existing employees in Unemployment Compensation UC -covered employment , and 3 unemployment compensation claims.
The NDNH was originally established to help states locate noncustodial parents living in a different state so that child support payments could be withheld from that parent's paycheck. Since its enactment in , the NDNH has been extended to several additional programs and agencies to verify program eligibility, prevent or end fraud, collect overpayments, or assure that program benefits are correct.
On May 12, , the House motioned to suspend the rules and passed H. On March 5, , the House passed H. Access to these data is tightly controlled by statute, and HHS implements strong privacy, confidentiality, and security protections to protect the data from unauthorized use or disclosure.
Also see footnote footnote Generally speaking, pursuant to P. This additional family income was expected to reduce dependence on public assistance by both promoting exit from TANF and preventing entry and re-entry to TANF. During the period from November 19, , through September 29, , the provision was not in effect. Topic Areas About Donate.
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