eSingleParent

        State must help all families, those receiving and those who don’t or never have received welfare.

        Child support agencies are required to assist families who qualify as IV-D cases.  To qualify as a IV-D case, the children involved must be under age 18 when you apply and services requested must be part of federal and state child support laws, and IV-D rules   42 U.S.C. § 654(4)(A).

         The state must provide services relating to the establishment of paternity, or establishment, modification, or enforcement of child support obligations with respect to each child for whom assistance is provided by the Title IV-A (welfare) department, or by Title IV-E (foster care), or any other child if any individual applies for such services to be performed on the behalf of that child. 42 U.S.C. § 654(4) (A) and (D).

         The IV-D agency must provide a monthly notice of the amount of support payments collected on behalf of individuals who have assigned their rights under the welfare program. If no collection has been made, or there are no longer any arrearages, or the assignment is no longer in effect, then the agency does not have to send monthly notices to IV-A clients ( TANF  recipients). 45 C.F.R. § 302.54(a)(1).

         The monthly notice must list separately payments collected from each absent parent when more than one absent parent owes support. The notice must also include the amount of current support collected, the amount of arrearages collected and the amount of support collected which was paid to the family. 45 C.F.R. § 302.54(a)(2).

         The OCSE  may grant a waiver of this notice rule to allow the state to provide quarterly rather than monthly notices if the state uses a toll-free automated voice response system which provides the information required by law. 45 C.F.R.§ 302.54(b)(ii).

         The state plan must include procedures to provide individuals who are applying for or receiving services from the IV-D agency with notice of all proceedings in which support obligations might be established or modified and also the state must provide a copy of any order modifying, establishing, or determining that no change should occur. This notice of change must be provided to the individual within 14 days after the issuance of the order.   42 U.S.C. § 654(12).

2.     Applications for IV-D Services

         The IV-D agency must make applications for child support readily accessible to the public. 45 C.F.R. § 303.2(a)(1).

         The IV-D agency must provide an application to the person requesting the service on the day the person requests it if the individual asks in person, or if the individual asks to apply in writing or by phone, the agency must send the application within 5 working days. 45 C.F.R. § 303.2(a)(2).

         The application must include information describing available services, the rights and responsibilities of the individual asking for services, the state fees (if the state charges fees for IV-D service), cost recovery policies, and distribution policies. 45 C.F.R. § 303.2(a)(2).

         All applications, information and services must be made available to AFDC/TANF, Medicaid, and foster care applicants within 5 days of referral to the IV-D agency. 45 C.F.R. § 303.2(a)(2).

3.  Assignment of Rights/ Cooperation for TANF Clients

Federal law states that applicants for or recipients of TANF assistance are required to assign their support rights to the state. However, the state may not collect support in excess of the total amount of assistance provided to the family. 42 U.S.C. § 657(a)(1)(B).

TANF recipients are also required to cooperate with the state in establishing paternity and pursuing support. "Cooperation" has two aspects: informational and behavioral. Informational cooperation includes good faith efforts to provide the name of and other identifying information about the absent parent. The exact requirements in this area will be set by the state. Behavioral cooperation includes appearing at interviews, hearings, and legal proceedings and submitting to genetic tests when they are ordered by a judge or administrative agency. These requirements are set by federal law. 42 U.S.C. § 654(29).

Once a finding of non-cooperation is made, the child support agency will promptly notify the affected individual, and the TANF agency of its determination and the basis thereof.) 42 U.S.C. § 654(29)(E).

Upon receipt of such notice, the TANF agency will have to sanction the individual or family for non-cooperation (unless the individual qualifies for a “good cause” or other exception). The Sanction for non-cooperation is a minimum reduction of 25% of the TANF grant. States can impose stiffer sanctions if they chose. 

Failure to promptly impose sanctions leaves the state open to a reduction of up tp 5% in its TANF block grant funds. 42 U.S.C. § 609(a)(5).

Best Practices: In implementing these provisions, states will have three major tasks:

Designing a system within the child support agency to implement that agency's new cooperation-related responsibilities. In so doing, states will have to consider the applicant/recipient's constitutional due process rights including (1) notice about the cooperation requirement and a description of exactly what is expected so that there is no misunderstanding about the nature of the cooperation obligation; (2) assistance to the client in obtaining information and documents; and (3) an appeals system to adjudicate any disagreements between the agency and the participant.

Establishing a sanctions policy. Since any sanction imposed on the family inevitably hurts the children, state should not go beyond the minimum penalty described in the federal law.

Developing the new information standard for determining whether an applicant/recipient has cooperated. The simplest approach is for the state to adopt the standard in current federal regulations. In most states this has worked well and is familiar to clients and state employees who will be administering the requirement. If states want to go beyond this, they should be guided by the experience of states which have tried to implement more explicit informational requirements. Among the lessons learned are:

(1) There should be no explicit informational cooperation requirements imposed on caretakers who are not the parents of the child(ren) receiving assistance. These caretakers may have little or no specific information about the missing parents. For this reason, the federal law mandates informational cooperation requirements only for custodial parents. States should adopt a policy under which they explain the advantages of paternity establishment and child support to non-parent caretakers, and solicit whatever information these caretakers have about the missing parents. Specific informational cooperation requirements should not be imposed on them.

(2) There could be different requirements for those with a support order and those without an order. For children who already have support orders, there is a fair amount of information available from the divorce decree, paternity order/acknowledgment, or support order. Providing one of these documents should satisfy the informational cooperation requirement since the document contains all of the information the state needs to begin the locate and enforcement process.

(3) In cases where there is no support order, but there are documents with the basic information about the missing parent (e.g. a birth certificate), providing that document should be sufficient. If there are  no documents containing detailed information, a check list of the kind of information the custodial parent might have could be helpful in developing leads. The check list should include address information, employment information, schools attended, names of family and friends, vehicle license and registration data, union affiliation and occupation. It might also include information about hospital admissions or criminal records so that those data bases could be searched . The more items on the check list, the more likely it is that the custodial parent can provide useful information.

(4) There should be different informational standards depending on the age of the child. Especially in cases where paternity needs to be established, data indicate that if details are solicited around the time of a baby's birth, it is likely that the mother will have considerable knowledge about the father. The greater the time lapse between the birth and the paternity establishment process, the less likely it is that the mother will actually have a lot of information about the father.

        (5) There must be provisions to deal with custodial parents who don't have the prescribed information. Federal law requires cooperation "in good faith". If the custodial parent makes a good faith effort but cannot provide specific information, she must nonetheless be considered cooperative.

4.     Attachment of bank accounts for current and back child support obligations (checking, saving, IRA's, etc.)

Federal law requires states to conduct quarterly data matches with financial institutions.  The State must enter into agreements with financial institutions to develop and operate a data match system to report certain data and identifying information for each non-custodial who has an account at that financial institution and who owes past due support. Financial institutions may charge a reasonable fee to the state for conducting the data match. 42 U.S.C. § 666 (a)(17)(b).

Financial institutions are protected from liability for providing the information. 42 U.S.C. §§ 666(a)(17)(C).

Federal law also requires states to have administrative process for seizing assets by intercepting unemployment compensation or worker's compensation (whether periodic or lump sum), confiscating judgments, settlements or lottery winnings, and attaching financial assets and retirement funds. 42 U.S.C. § 666(c)(1)(G).

Best Practice: States should design data match programs with banks and other financial institutions so that liens and asset seizures can be used more efficiently and effectively than they now are in most states.

5.     Attachment of Federal and State Income Tax refunds for back child support (IRS Offset and State Offset programs)

States are required to have procedures to attach federal and state income tax refunds for collection of child support for TANF/AFDC and non-TANF/AFDC IV-D cases.  For tax intercept collection of child support that is owed to the state from AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) or TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families- the replacement for AFDC), provisions included in the PRWORA are that an arrearage of at least $150 must be owed.  For non-TANF/AFDC cases, back child support of $500 must be owed.  The Child Support Enforcement Agency may charge payees not currently receiving AFDC a fee for this service.  Fees may not exceed average cost per case to deliver this service in the state. 42 U.S.C. § 664 (Federal Offset), 45 C.F.R. §§ 302.60,  303.7

Federal law requires states to submit all appropriate cases for IRS offset and State offset annually.  42 U.S.C. §464(b)(1).

The state must first notify the individual who owes past child support of its intent to offset

                prior to notifying the Secretary of the Treasury of the intent to withhold. 42 U.S.C. § 464(a)(3)(A).

  Federal law applies "Family First distribution ton  to all  payments including State Offset ( attachment of state income tax refunds. The only exception is, IRS Offset ( attachment of federal income tax refunds)  the government gets first distribution to recoup welfare benefits. 42 U.S.C. § 657(a)(2)(B)(iv).