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A Critical Situation in California

$207 over nine years. That's all one woman got from her ex-husband to raise their two children. It's an average of less than two dollars a month to feed, clothe and house two children. All the while her ex-husband's wages had been garnished at the rate of fifty percent, but that money that never made it to his children. This is one of too many sad stories prompting a national effort to improve child support enforcement and collections. According to recent federal figures, national child support collections are up 20% since the adoption of 1996's welfare reform laws. Despite these gains, the Association for the Enforcement of Child Support (ACES) estimates that approximately 30 million children are owed more than $41 billion in unpaid child support, even though taxpayers spend over $3 billion per year on public child support enforcement. More than 9 million children on welfare lack even a basic child support order. Because of the new time limit on welfare, it is especially important that dramatic improvements be made. In the meantime, millions of children are going without what can be their financial lifeline.

Big States Have Big Problems:

California is a state struggling to improve its collections rate. California operates one of the poorest performing child support systems in the nation -- it is estimated that California fails to collect any support for nearly five out of six children. Recent federal statistics reveal only 21% of families who depend on the state to enforce child support get any payments at all.

Part of the problem is that California's system is very fragmented -- each of California's 58 counties has its own independent child support enforcement system under the auspices of the District Attorney. Meaning there are 58 separate and unequal agencies handling child support. And nearly two million children are waiting for District Attorneys in the state's 58 counties to obtain court orders for support. The problem arises from the fact that there is no uniform statewide method, automated or otherwise, for tracking and enforcing child support collection orders. And with a population that is as congested and, simultaneously, mobile as California's, these problems are increased tenfold.

Two current bills in the state legislature are looking to change that. Both bills, one penned by State Senators John Burton and Adam Schiff and the other by Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, propose the formation of a Department of Child Support Services to assume responsibility for the oversight of county child support collection and thereby creating a network of centralized agencies with uniform protocols to take over the state child support system. This proposal would essentially remove the District Attorneys from a crucial part of the process, utilizing them mainly for prosecution.

According to Paula Roberts, a senior attorney with the Center for Law & Social Policy, California's problems in the child support arena are set against the backdrop of a weak child support state agency, the Office of Child Support, which falls within the Department of Human Services. This agency, according to Roberts is, "way down on the food chain in terms of authority and visibility." Roberts says the real players are locally elected District Attorney's (DA's) who run the enforcement program. Legally the DAs are responsible to the state Attorney General. No matter what the state office of child support says, Roberts says, "the local DA's can say we don't care, we aren't doing it and you can't make us." So if a woman in San Francisco seeks state support to prosecute a scofflaw dad in LA. The DAs don't coordinate their efforts, don't use the same forms or procedures and even if they win a judgement in one county, may not be able to enforce it in another.

But the DA's argue that they are the proper agency to handle child support collection and they have been doing a good job of maintaining the system. Peggy Jensen, Director of the San Mateo District Attorney's Division of Family Support and President of the California Family Support Council, says that the DAs embrace the proposed legislation and also see the need for a single computerized system. Since California must still comply with federal standards and establish a statewide-computerized system or face severe financial penalties, the DA's welcome a single system that would help them do a better job and attract talented support workers. But they feel that to lessen the role of the DA's would be a detriment. Jensen says the District Attorneys, as the law, the enforcement arm of the child support collection operations have more clout -- when the DA's talk, people listen. Without them, child support would be even more difficult to collect.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

(ACES)

California Department of Child Support Services - Office of Child Support

Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement

Deadbeat Dads & Moms of America

The Periphery of Emotion