Government Child Support Enforcement

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program is a Federal/state/tribal partnership, to help strengthen families and reduce welfare dependency by ensuring that parents live up to the responsibility of supporting their children. Many families have been able to remain self-sufficient and off public assistance due to the services received from the Child Support Enforcement program. State, local and tribal child support agencies locate non-custodial parents, establish paternity when necessary, establish orders for support and collect child support payments for families.

All states and some tribes run a child support enforcement program, either in the Human Services Department or Department of Revenue, often with the help of prosecuting attorneys, district attorneys, other law enforcement agencies and officials of family or domestic relations courts.

The Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement provides funding and services to the states, some tribes, and other jurisdictions to ensure their success in serving families who need financial support from a non-custodial parent. Child support enforcement services are available automatically for families receiving assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In addition, child support services are available to families not receiving TANF who apply for such services, as well as, families who were formerly on TANF. Current child support payments collected on behalf of former TANF families are distributed to the families. Child support payments collected on behalf of non-TANF families are also forwarded to the families.

Program Results for FY 2003

The following Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) preliminary data report[1] highlights financial and statistical achievements of the Child Support Enforcement program for fiscal year 2003. This report is a first look at fiscal year 2003 data and shows advancements made in the Child Support program over the previous year. The information is taken from state-submitted reports on program status sent to OCSE quarterly for financial data and annually for statistical data. The data show $21.2 billion in child support payments were collected, total caseload was 15.9 million, 1.5 million paternities established or acknowledged, and 1.2 million new child support orders were established in fiscal year 2003.

Collections. Collection data are shown under the following reporting categories: current IV-A and IV-E assistance ($1.8 billion), former assistance ($8.5 billion), and never assistance ($10.9 billion) in tables 1 and 3: and TANF and non-TANF in table 3 to allow comparisons with previous years. Total child support collections were $21.2 billion for fiscal year 2003 (tables 1 and 3). This was a 5.2 percent increase in collections from the previous fiscal year.

Child support payments are collected through various methods, such as income withholding, unemployment compensation interception, and state or Federal income tax refund offsets. Income withholding accounts for 66 percent of total collections received (almost $16.7 billion) in FY 2003. Money collected and sent to families totaled almost $19.0 billion in FY 2003, an increase of 6 percent since FY 2002.

Source Federal Office of Child Support