Feds Withhold Some Child Support

At least 47 families have been deprived of child support funds by a federal program that requires welfare mothers to sign over checks to help pay for benefits, a new federal report found.

By law, families receiving welfare must allow state governments to garnish child support money they are due. After deducting for the cost of providing benefits, the government is supposed to send the unused child support - usually about half - on to the family.

But the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services reports that, for at least one month, the government actually collected more from the child support-paying parent than it doled out in benefits to 47 families in 5 states.

"This perverts the whole idea of child support", said Vicki Turetsky, a senior attorney for the Center for Law and Social Policy.

"The child's father wants to support the kid but the money is diverted by the state as a reimbursement for welfare. There are so many problems with this system that, in many cases, the families lose out."

The report cites other problems with the way the government uses child support for welfare reimbursement.

Eight percent of parents in five states studied in-depth experienced child support payment delays even after they left welfare. In a broader survey of all states, 11 states reported difficulty in transferring child support to families leaving welfare.

Primarily at fault, according to the report, are outdated computer programs and automated systems that miscalculate how much families are owed.

The report also blames the federal statute that requires states to be accurate in just 75 percent of their transactions with child support.

"That would be comparable to saying that a business payroll process would be deemed successful even if 25 percent of its employees were not paid on time", the report said.

The HHS department in charge of the system, the Administration for Children and Families, did not immediately return calls by the Associated Press. But in the report, the office issued a statement that agreed with the major findings of the report and most of its recommendations.

Among them:

• Improve automated systems that distribute child support payments.
• Do a better job of collecting address change information from families when they leave welfare.
• Implement policies and procedures for handling excess child support.
• Improve accountability through a state self-assessment process that oversees the collection and distribution process for families that leave welfare.