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Monday, March 09, 2009

 
ALABAMA IS LISTED ON SOUTH CAROLINA DSS ABANDONED PROPERTY LIST

According to information posted at this site:
The Child Support Enforcement Division of the South Carolina Department of Social Services is trying to locate the following people. We are holding funds that were returned to us as "undeliverable" by the U.S. Postal Service. All other attempts to locate these people have failed. If your name is on the following list, please send a photocopy of 1) driver's license or other photo ID, 2) Social Security Card and 3) utility bill or bank statement with your current address to Financial Services, c/o Alfredia Eaddy, P.O. Box 810, Columbia, SC 29202. If you have questions, you may contact us by calling (803)898-9210 in the Columbia area or 1-800-768-5858 nationwide.
People are mobile, do not always stay in one place, and sometimes move without leaving a forwarding address. Moreover, South Carolina is the only State that has yet to implement the federally-mandated computerized child support tracking and collection system. Therefore, it is understandable why the State would sometimes have trouble locating the payees/obligees/people who are supposed to receive the money which South Carolina has collected on their behalf. So it is commendable that the State is posting this list of payees on the CSED website where people may be able to see it and make arrangements to retrieve their money.

According to the South Carolina DSS Abandoned Property List, ALABAMA CHILD SUP, whose last known address is PO BOX 244015, MONTGOMERY, AL 36124, has failed to claim some money that South Carolina collected on its behalf. So Alabama, if you are reading this, give South Carolina a call; the State of South Carolina has some money for you. And if you are holding money that belongs to South Carolina, we are certain that South Carolina could use it.

If it is true that the State of South Carolina is holding, and probably drawing interest on, money that belongs to the State of Alabama because it does not have a “current address” for the State of Alabama Child Support Division, then what hope do non-institutional obligees have regarding receipt of their money? More important, one has to wonder how much effort the State of South Carolina puts into locating those on the “abandoned property list.” Surely, it cannot be that difficult to locate the address for a State Agency.

Theoretically, everyone in the United States who is both employed and receives a W-2 should be on some State’s Employee New Hire Directory and the State of South Carolina should be able to match them with the names on its abandoned property list. But the reality is that either DSS or some other State agency gets to keep the interest generated on the “abandoned property” so there is a built in disincentive to expend much effort in locating the obligees. Additionally, because South Carolina maintains neither a centralized nor electronically accessible data base of New Hires, we suspect that other States are having trouble locating South Carolina residents who are either entitled to money collected by those States or owe money to residents of those States. In either case, someone is not receiving money they would be receiving if the South Carolina Department of Social Services was doing its job and the South Carolina Legislature had created the Employee New Hire Directory as required by Federal Law.

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