Locating Delinquent,
Non-Custodial Parents is Serious Business
How does the government track down parents who are in arrears in child-support payments? A new, high-tech computer network system is helping the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) do the job.
The states provide information to HHS regarding the amount of past-due child support owed by non-custodial parents. The ACF network system includes information that can help locate non-custodial parents, such as wage information from employers, account information from banks, certain tax information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and benefit information from various other Federal and state agencies. And, once a delinquent non-custodial parent is found, or the parent's income and assets are identified, state officials can take a number of actions to collect the overdue child support, up to arresting and bringing the parent to court, as a last resort. Most of these new automated tools sprang from the Welfare Reform Law of 1996.
State/Federal Partnerships
Leave Little Room for Error
New laws ensure the
accuracy and timeliness of this system's information by requiring the
following:
| Every employer must immediately submit information about all new hires to the National Directory of New Hires, and they must report the wages of all workers quarterly. Analyzing this information, along with data on unemployment benefits and child-support payments, enabled the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to locate 2.8 million delinquent non-custodial parents in 1999. |
| Financial institutions compare their accounts with lists of known delinquents provided by HHS. When the institution makes a successful "match," that institution notifies HHS, and HHS notifies the state so the state can place a lien on, or seize all or part of, the accounts identified. Since August 1999, such analyses have located about $1 billion in owed money deposited in multi-state institutions. (Since each state has its own lien and levy laws and procedures, the total amount recovered for child support is not yet available.) |
The states and HHS also are currently working with the IRS to deduct child-support arrearages from Federal income tax refunds. A record amount of $1.3 billion in overdue child support was withheld from tax-year 1998 refunds.
