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Bill would lengthen child support payments

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Parents could be on the hook for child-support payments past their child's 18th birthday under a bill to be considered today in a Senate subcommittee.

That could cost a noncustodial parent an extra $3,000 if he or she was forced to pay an additional year of child support. But it would also ensure students who started school later than their peers would not have their financial support yanked while they were still in high school.

The bill says that if a child is still in high school, the parent would have to make child-support payments until the child graduated or until the youth turned 19, whichever occurred later.

The changes were proposed at the urging of South Carolina Department of Social Services officials who were beginning to see signs that more and more students were getting caught in a gap between their 18th birthday and graduation day.

"If you had a child whose birthday was in October and they turn 18 in their senior year, they are without child support for about 9 months," said Larry McKeown, director of DSS division of child support enforcement.

"This levels the playing field. There is nothing magical in the 18th birthday. The magic is in paying child support until they finish school as long as your child is making satisfactory progress," McKeown said.

Since 2003 the amount of child-support payments paid to parents caring for children has crept up steadily from $244 million to $254 million last fiscal year. The number of cases stayed about the same, while the collection amounts increased from $239 to $256 per month, according to DSS data.

The House approved the bill in February.

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Federal rebates check

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - Many Wisconsinites will be getting long-promised federal tax rebates soon, but some of those payments are being diverted.

The state Department of Workforce Development says all or part of the economic stimulus payments to more than 171,000 people in Wisconsin will be intercepted because they're behind in child support payments.

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Man get CS Back.

Judge David Roper said he felt bad for Kenneth Samuels when he learned the child he had fathered for 11 years wasn't his.

Justice was also shortchanged, the judge said, because Mr. Samuels had been paying child support all of those years.

Last month, Judge Roper ruled that Jamie Hope, the child's mother, and Oba Wallace, the child's biological father, would have to repay Mr. Samuels $14,460 in child support he had paid since 1997.

Such an order is unusual, but not unique.

"We have seen it happen before," said Sandra Jarrett of the state's Child Support Recovery Unit.

Usually there is no intent to defraud, Ms. Jarrett said. Mothers who have had relationships with more than one man might not know who the biological father Is without a DNA test.
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Ex-child support clerk pleads guilty

MERIDIAN -- Former Lauderdale County child support clerk Cindy Truhett has pleaded guilty to embezzlement of $216,000.

Truhett, 40, was the clerk for the Bank Plan, set up in Lauderdale and Clarke counties to collect child support from noncustodial parents and transfer it to custodial parents.

In a plea agreement, Truhett was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison, with four years suspended. She is to serve four years probation after her release.

The attorney general's office said the embezzlement occurred over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007.

"She accepted full responsibility. She's ready to pay the price for that and resume her life," said Truhett's attorney, Terry Jordan.

A bonding company has already repaid Lauderdale County the $216,000 that was embezzled. An audit is ongoing to determine if more money was taken.

The charges levied against Truhett were the result of a contempt case filed by Laura Main on April 23, 2007.

Main claimed that she made several attempts to contact Truhett when Main fell behind in receiving her support payments. Main further stated Truhett misled her in saying the "checks were in the mail."

"I'm going to tell you, I get no pleasure ... to see her family suffer, but people have to answer," said Main, who said $1,500 of her child support was embezzled.

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Give gift of child support at holidays

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You might believe that parents separated from their kids might do a little extra during the holidays. They'd want their offspring well fed, in warm clothes against the cold. And that either because of parental love or guilt that they're absent, the child would have plenty under the tree on Christmas.

In many cases you would be 100 percent wrong.

Instead, according to the Virginia Department of Social Services, some folks purposely skip paying child support in November and December. They know the state will intercept their tax refunds early next year. So in their selfish little minds, parents count on children getting the support. Just not now.

Merry Christmas, kid.

Veteran child support employees are familiar with the trend.

"It's a phenomenon that repeats itself every year," said Nick Young, director of child support enforcement for the DSS.

Young has heard it all: Parents get distracted. They've moved on to the second or third families and forgotten about the first.

But more than likely, the parent who has custody of the child is counting on the support to go holiday shopping.

"What are they going to do?" Young asked, "Buy them Christmas gifts in February?"

Last month, Young sent 150,434 Social Security numbers to the Internal Revenue Service and the Virginia Department of the Treasury. Updated biweekly, the numbers belong to parents who are $500 or more behind on their child support.

"If they have money coming back, we'll get it," Young said.

In 2006, "tax intercepts" collected $33 million from federal returns and $2 million from the state. The money was forwarded to the children to whom it was owed.

In a state where 484,000 children receive child support, DSS has implemented new programs and is rethinking old ones in their effort to snare support scofflaws.

Good. The state needs to use all its resources to fight for Virginia's children. If it doesn't, the debt falls to us. One-third of parents who do not receive child support end up on public assistance to meet their families' basic needs.

In the year ended June 30, Virginia collected more than $608 million in child support, a nearly 4 percent increase from the previous year. In Virginia, 88 percent of adults paying child support are men; 12 percent are women.

That sounds like a lot of money. But it's a small proportion of the total due: About 268,000 delinquent Virginia parents owe $2.4 billion in child support.

Last month, Virginia received a southern regional award for implementing a first-in-the-nation program that targets scofflaws through their cellphones. Since the state created the program two years ago, more than a dozen states have established it.

Young and his staff came up with the idea after realizing that cell-phones, which about 70 percent of Americans possess, could be a useful collections tool.

After exhausting every other method of locating a delinquent parent, the state subpoenas cell-phone companies to determine if the parent is a customer and has a billing address.

Twice a year, social services sends a list of names to the largest cell-phone companies that operate in Virginia. Officials request only an address, but some companies send the address and the person's cell-phone number. Companies do not send a list of phone numbers the person has called.

The practice has drawn rumblings in a state where people celebrate privacy. The idea of companies' releasing information for government use leaves me queasy, too.

But the idea of a parent refusing to take care of his or her child leaves me even queasier. In this case, I'm willing to ask the cell-phone company to give up the digits.

"Look, we're going to use all available means to find them," Young said last week. "I just want the address. ... I'm into, 'Where are you?' "

In addition to the cell-phone initiative, DSS began its "Early Intervention" program. That program meets with parents as soon as they receive an order to pay.

Case workers emphasize parents' responsibilities and ask if they face any issues that might hinder them from paying. For instance, if the person is jobless or underemployed, officials direct them to existing agencies in the community to help.

As young employees join the staff, child enforcement increasingly has gone high-tech. Caseworkers scope out MySpace and Facebook pages to track scofflaws.

"We've had people who say, 'I can't believe you found me off my blog,' " Young said.

Many people are familiar with the infamous "Most Wanted" deadbeat parent lists.

Just last week, Young and his staff discussed whether they will continue to use it as a poster or scrap the paper version after 19 years in favor of an online-only version.

Using the posters, the state has found 140 people, Young said.

As technology changes, Young said the state is willing to consider different ways of tracking delinquent parents.

"What we're trying to do is convince people to modify their behavior," Young said. "If you're going to live in the great state of Virginia ... we need you to take care of your kids."

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Agencies partner to help Illinois collect $420,000 in past-due child support

ILLINOIS - The state's collection of past-due child-support payments increased 71 percent to $420,000 in 2007, thanks to a partnership between two state agencies seeking to crack down on delinquent parents, according to a statement released Sunday by Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office.

The state collected $245,000 in overdue child-support payments in 2006, according to the statement. But beginning this year, officials combined the services of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which collects child-support payments, with the Financial and Professional Regulation Department, the agency that issues state licenses for everything from public accountants to message therapists.

With this partnership, people who owe more than $1,000 in child support can be denied licenses when they are up for renewal.

Child-support payments statewide rose to $1.22 billion this year from $1.14 billion in 2006.

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Plastic vs. Paper: Child-support funds now by debit card

Parents receiving child-support checks will get plastic, rather than paper, next month. As part of a statewide change called ncKIDScards, parents who receive their child support via check will be issued debit cards.

The state Department of Health and Human Services began rolling out the program in April.

Susan Scales, the local child support director, said parents were notified earlier this year about the change. She said the new debit cards would benefit parents.

"This gets the payments to the custodial parent quicker. It's easier, it's safer," Scales said.

The new program will begin Monday. Parents enrolled in the program will receive a package with their debit card explaining the program and how to use the card.

The cards are not credit cards, Scales said. The money spent is the money contributed to the parent's child support account with the state.

Not everyone will get the debit cards, however. Many parents opt to have payments deposited into their bank accounts rather than have a check processed through the state. The accounts for those parents will not be affected by the change.

The debit cards will be backed Visa and can be used wherever Visa cards are accepted. Parents can also withdraw cash from their account using the cards.

More than 3,000 parents are enrolled in the child-support program in Rockingham County.

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Child support enforcement agency to lose $8 million in funding in ‘07

Kris WiseDaily Mail staff Tuesday September 12, 2006
The state agency charged with enforcing child support payments in West Virginia will lose $8 million next year from the federal government, further tightening the belt of an office already facing an increasing caseload and static staffing levels.

Changes in the way child support recipients receive their payments -- they now come through automated debit card accounts -- have increased the number of questions and phone calls the Bureau for Child Support Enforcement gets on a daily basis, although the number of employees hasn't moved much above 450 in the past six or seven years.

The number of active child support cases in West Virginia also is on the rise from the past decade, with the state helping process payments for about 117,800 families this year. More than 130,000 families receive some sort of help from the office, and child support collection rose last year to $178 million, up $13 million from 2004.

The state also helped administer 5,170 paternity tests last year for families who were looking to secure child support payments but needed genetic confirmation about a parent.

The funding formula changed for those tests, too, and the state's portion increased this year. The federal government once paid 90 percent of the cost of genetic testing; it now pays less than 67 percent, and the state has to pick up the rest of the tab.

The formula change adds an extra $50,000 to the state budget this year.

Starting in 2007, the federal government also is revoking one source of extra money that the bureau has counted on for several years to make up almost one third of its annual budget.
The bureau's $30 million budget consists of one-third state funds and two-thirds matching money from the federal government.

Next year a $4 million performance-based bonus that the government typically awards to the West Virginia bureau no longer will be eligible to receive matching federal funds.

Usually the state can count on drawing down an extra $8 million in matching money from that $4 million bonus, for a total of $12 million. With the federal government trying to shave spending in certain sectors, it's no longer going to match the bonus pot.

Jacobs said the $8 million budget loss next year would likely send bureau officials to the state Legislature to ask lawmakers to look at funding changes.

The money goes into the bureau's regular budget, helping pay staff salaries, operate child support programs and upgrade office equipment.

"We're in the initial stages of trying to figure out what affect it will have and what we will do," said Garrett Jacobs, deputy commissioner for the bureau. "No decisions have been made about cutting back on positions or services at this time."

The federal funding cuts were part of a nationwide $1.6 billion savings measure passed by Congress in December.

The move will shrink a budget that was already reduced by $1 million on the state level this year because the bureau renegotiated some program contracts to try and trim expenses.
"We are definitely not an agency that is overstaffed," Jacobs said Monday. "There are improvements we could make with more staff, and whether the state feels that would be beneficial or not is up to them. We are always getting more calls than we have customer service agents. We don't have enough staff to handle the magnitude of calls we get."

Less than two years ago, the state for the first time began processing child support payments through debit accounts.

The bureau received a spate of criticisms from some of the families they served, who called the new payment process confusing and less efficient.

Jacobs said the bureau's state and county offices were temporarily flooded with calls about the program, but the pace of questions has slowed.

"The biggest issue we had when we rolled it out...was a lot of people just weren't used to using a debit card," Jacobs said. "They were either unbanked or they didn't have a debit card. Once we got them used to it, it was a smoother transition."

Funding changes for the bureau take effect in July. The Legislature will approve next year's budget in March.

Contact writer Kris Wise at kriswise@dailymail.com or 348-1244.

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