PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

REPORT: "OCTOMOM" NOW RECEIVING PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

According to TMZ, "Octomom" is now receiving public assistance. So, why doesn't the State of California go after the father for child support?

TEXAS ANSWERS THE QUESTION "HOW DOES NEW HIRE REPORTING BENEFIT THE COMPANY?"

How does it make sense and help a company's bottom line to comply with such a reporting requirement? Simple: the reports are used primarily for tracking parents who owe back child support and for reducing fraud under various social programs, including unemployment benefits. Employers are a vital link in the effort to ensure payment of child support, not only through garnishment of wages, but also through the new hire reports. If your employees who are owed child support start receiving it because of someone else's new hire report, you will have a better, more focused employee. What you do can help other employers, and what they do in that regard will help you. New hire reporting also helps your company through reduction of benefit fraud. Part of the unemployment tax that every taxed employer has to pay comes from claim fraud that must be recouped somehow, and of course the "somehow" is by resorting to employers! Since a new employee's wages will not be reported to TWC for up to three or four months following their hire, the new hire report can help TWC detect UI benefit claim fraud three or four months earlier than it might normally be found. For more details, see the article titled "How Employers Can Help Reduce Claim Fraud" in the Post-Employment Problems section of this book. In addition, since the new hire reporting law absolutely requires employees to give you their social security numbers, it is one more tool to use in verifying SSNs (see the article in the next section of this book titled "Verification of Social Security Numbers"). If a cross-match turns up a problem with the SSN, you can then contact the Social Security Administration for assistance in verifying whether the number is valid.Finally, new hire reporting can help avoid the problem of employees engaging in "double-dipping" with other state or federal benefit programs, such as workers' compensation.

Online Source: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/new_hire_reporting_laws.html

AN INTERESTING TAKE ON THE WAY THE CHILD SUPPORT WORLD WORKS

Note "66% to 34%, “Undistributable Child Support Collections,” and why HHS/OAS is more concerned about its share, than kids getting theirs…." at http://familycourtmatters.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/66-to-34-undistributable-child-support-collections-and-why-hhsoas-is-more-concerned-about-its-share-than-kids-getting-theirs/."

NET UNDISTRIBUTED COLLECTIONS (UDC), FISCAL YEAR 2010

Review Net Undistributed Collections (UDC), Fiscal Year 2010 and weep.

We can do better than this.

The following letter appeared in the Post and Courier.

____________________________________________________

On June 10 at 1:29 p.m. I placed a call to the local Charleston Child support agency to reach a case worker whom I have attempted to reach 21 times since March with no success. Two years ago I paid the fee to receive assistance in obtaining child support for my grandchildren. On March 3, a Cincinnati court passed a judgment against the non-custodial parent and awarded support.

Details had to come from the Charleston office. So I made multiple attempts to reach them. Last week I sent a letter to them after receiving a request for paperwork that had been filled out five times. I returned it with a letter informing them I had received no information from the March 3 hearing. I received that information via mail one week later. To date I have yet to receive the payments. I challenge anyone to try to reach someone at this agency. Just call 953-9400 and follow the prompts. Good luck.

Connie Scott
Claussen House Drive
Edisto Island
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/jun/29/letters-to-the-editor/

CIVIL CONTEMPT, INDIGENT PARENTS, AND DUE PROCESS IN SOUTH CAROLINA

A review of "Civil cases don't require lawyer: Justices split 5-4 along ideological lines in case of S.C. man sent to jail over child support payments" would lead one to believe that the ACLU took a beating in this case. However, a review of the Supreme Court Order itself tells a remarkably different story. On behalf of the Court, Justice Breyer wrote:

South Carolina’s Family Court enforces its child support orders by threatening with incarceration for civil contempt those who are (1) subject to a child support order, (2) able to comply with that order, but (3) fail to do so. We must decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires the State to provide counsel (at a civil contempt hearing) to an indigent person potentially faced with such incarceration. We conclude that where as here the custodial parent (entitled to receive the support) is unrepresented by counsel, the State need not provide counsel to the noncustodial parent (required to provide the support). But we attach an important caveat, namely, that the State must nonetheless have in place alternative procedures that assure a fundamentally fair determination of the critical incarceration-related question, whether the supporting parent is able to comply with the support order.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Appellant had not received the requisite Due Process, reversed the Ruling of the South Carolina Supreme Court, and remanded the case back to the South Carolina Supreme Court for further proceedings. Specifically the Court found:

The record indicates that Turner received neither counsel nor the benefit of alternative procedures like those we have described. He did not receive clear notice that his ability to pay would constitute the critical question in his civil contempt proceeding. No one provided him with a form (or the equivalent) designed to elicit information about his financial circumstances. The court did not find that Turner was able to pay his arrearage, but instead left the relevant “finding” section of the contempt order blank. The court nonetheless found Turner in contempt and ordered him incarcerated. Under these circumstances Turner’s incarceration violated the Due Process Clause. We vacate the judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Ultimately, the trial judge’s misunderstanding of basic legal procedural and substantive tenets will unnecessarily cost the State of South Carolina millions of dollars in the future. And what is interesting is that, not only was this uncomplicated case botched, but it was botched by U. S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s former law partner and most recent nominee to the Federal Bench. And if he can’t handle simple cases and make sure that all the blanks are filled in.

TOTAL AMOUNT OF ARREARAGES DUE FOR ALL FISCAL YEARS FOR FIVE CONSECUTIVE FISCAL YEARS

Click Total Amount of Arrearages Due for All Fiscal Years for Five Consecutive Fiscal Years to access the latest figures from the Office of Child Support Enforcement of the for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

According to these latest figures, the overall arrearages have increased from $104,406,015,371 to $110,261,308,005 over the last five years. And South Carolina’s arrearages have increased from 1,181,830,710 to 1,303,527,806 during that same period with almost $69,000,000 of that coming in the last fiscal year. Over the five year reporting period, South Carolina has had two governors and three appointed DSS Directors, so it is difficult to lay the blame for this mess at any one individual's feet. On the other hand, Larry McKeown has been the Director of the Child Support Enforcement Division for the entire period, so maybe he should be held accountable.

THE OFFICE OF CHILD SUPPORT STATE BOXSCORES FOR FY 2010

The Office of Child Support State Boxscores for FY 2010 have been posted. Click here to see how your state compares to other states. And click here to read about a problem that continues to be unique to South Carolina. Three governors, three DSS Chiefs, and almost $100 Million in fines later, South Carolina still can't get it right.

According to South Carolina Department of Social Service Presentation to the Full Ways and Means Committee, the South Carolina Department of Social Services had a budget deficit of $28 Million as of January 13, 2011. Approximately $10 Million of the deficit is apparently a portion of a recurring federal fine imposed against South Carolina related to the State's failure to install a federally-mandated child support tracking and collection system. According to SC agency: retirement was key in $28 Million deficit, "about $17 Million of the agency's deficit disappeared when it changed how it calculated how much money it needed to cover its programs and froze hiring."

Before what amounts to an accounting error was discovered, DSS advised the Full Ways and Means Committee that the federal government was to blame for its deficit woes. However, the federal fines that were imposed for South Carolina's failure to comply with the federal mandate to install a computerized child support tracking and collection system are of DSS's own doing. And the problems with uncollected child support are the fault of CSED Director Larry McKeown. Additionally, Mr. McKeown has failed to institute measures to reduce the child support arrearages that have been successfully implemented in other States. And as a result of the ineffective manner in which Mr. McKeown has run his department, South Carolina has not only been fined over $90 Million, but has missed out on federal performance grants.

On the bright side, frightening as the "misplacement" of $17 Million is, South Carolina's new DSS Director appears to be on the ball. We would say she has already earned a raise and that if "the past is prologue" the 70,000 missing South Carolina Deadbeat parents should come out of hiding now and try to work out a payment plan before it is too late.

SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE LACK OF AN AUTOMATED CHILD SUPPORT TRACKING SYSTEM

In a nutshell, South Carolina has been fined over $80 Million for failure to install computerized child support collection and tracking systems in compliance with federal law.

This is one of our favorite topics. So not only have we written dozens of letters and e-mails to the folks who have the power to fix the problem, but we write about the problem extensively on this Blog. For example, you may want to read SOUTH CAROLINA DSS FINES MOUNT, S.C. FINE: $82,858,661 AND COUNTING, UNDERSTANDING THE CUMULATIVE NATIONAL CHILD SUPPORT DEBT, MAJOR FEDERAL FUNDING AT RISK IN SOUTH CAROLINA, LINKS TO THE COMPLETE RESPONSES OF SC DSS TO BUDGET PROVISOS REGARDING COMPUTERIZED CHILD SUPPORT TRACKING AND COLLECTION SYSTEM, and HOW DO SEVENTY THOUSAND PEOPLE MANAGE TO SECRET THEMSELVES IN A STATE THE SIZE OF SOUTH CAROLINA?

The bottom line is that, because (apparent) lifetime appointee Larry McKeown will not, or can not, perform his (well-paid) job and the General Assembly has ignored funded federal mandates, South Carolina custodial parents and guardians are owed over $1.5 Billion in back child support and approximately 70,000 South Carolina parents are skirting their legal support obligations and passing them on to the taxpayers of the entire United States.

Interestingly, though former South Carolina AG Henry McMaster issued an Opinion that found that South Carolina laws making nonsupport of children a crime are lawful, to our knowledge his office never prosecuted a single non-support case. Additionally, when faced with the prospect of a $28 Million DSS budget deficit, rather than taking steps to increase child support collections so that custodial parents could get off of "welfare," the General Assembly chose to cut support to those parents.

Click here to access the Child Support Dockets Database for Chatham County Georgia. By searching the database by name, month, year, and/or judge, users can review a list of all those people in Chatham County who have either failed to pay or failed to maintain payments on their child support obligations.

We are certain that Chatham County Georgia is not the only county in the United States that maintains this type of database. However, we were surprised to learn that the Savannah Morning News provides a link to the database on its on-line edition. This service has to help increase the child support collection rate in Savannah. So we have to wonder why a similar system has not been instituted in Charleston South Carolina.

According to the most recent data available from the Office of Child Support Enforcement of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Oklahoma has 139,413 child support cases with arrears due and 89,500 cases paying towards arrears. According to the same data, South Carolina has 139,894 cases with arrears due and 77,130 cases paying towards arrears. Click Table 6: CASES WITH ARREARS DUE AND CASES PAYING TOWARDS ARREARS, FY 2008 to review the complete table.

Although there are some states that are doing a worse job than Oklahoma is doing, we picked Oklahoma because of its similarity with South Carolina in terms of the total number of child support cases with arrears due. However, readers will note that while South Carolina has only 581 more child support cases with arrears due than Oklahoma, South Carolina has 12,370 more cases that are not paying towards arrears than does Oklahoma. The total number of child support cases with arrears due in which no payments are being made towards the arrears in South Carolina is 62,764, which works out to a non-payment rate of 45%. The total number of child support cases with arrears due in which no payments are being made towards the arrears in Oklahoma is 49,913, which works out to a non-payment rate of 36%.

Because South Carolina is doing such a poor job of collecting child support arrearages, U. S. taxpayers are having to help support 62,764 South Carolina households containing hundreds of thousands of children that do not belong to them. And at last count, South Carolina was receiving approximately $40,000,000 in Temporary Aid to Needy Families on an annual basis.

Something is not right with this picture.

NEW HIRE REPORTING & JIM HODGES, ET. AL. V. TOMMY G. THOMPSON, ET. AL.

Note the following from http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/002512.P.pdf:

The district court opinion contains a comprehensive history, the details of which need not be repeated here, of the federal government’s longstanding involvement in child support enforcement programs and related federal efforts to work with the States to solve the serious problem of nonpayment of child support. See Hodges v. Shalala, 121 F.Supp.2d 854 (D.S.C. 2000). Currently, as a condition of receipt of any federal funding under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 651-669, States must have an approved state plan for child and spousal support that meets all the requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 654. Among the prerequisites for approval of a Title IV-D Plan are the requirements that the State establish and operate an automated data processing and information retrieval system, see 42 U.S.C. § 654(24), and a state child support disbursement unit (SDU), see 42 U.S.C. § 654(27)(A). South Carolina concedes that it has neither a federally certifiable statewide automated system for child support nor an SDU. See Hodges, 121 F. Supp. 2d at 86 (emphasis added).

Without an approved state plan, a State may lose federal funding under both Title IV-D (child support enforcement) and Title IV-A (TANF). See 42 U.S.C. § 655(a)(1)(A); 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(2). Alternatively, a State may opt for an alternative penalty in lieu of disapproval of their state plan and the withholding of federal funds if the State is making a good faith effort to comply with the program’s requirements and the State has submitted a corrective compliance plan. See 42 U.S.C. § 655(a)(4). South Carolina has elected to incur the alternative penalty.

South Carolina needs to get a New Hire Reporting Statute in place just as the other forty-nine states have done. Doing so would help South Carolina locate the 70,000 parents who are not paying their court-ordered child support; it would also help get some of the custodial parents off of welfare and their children off of Medicaid. Additionally, not only is it unconscionable that South Carolina has enabled non-custodial parents to steal over $1.2 Billion from their children, but like the computerized child support tracking and collection system, a state new hire reporting system and registry is required by 42 U.S.C. § 655.

Those who do not believe us on this last point should ask South Carolina State Senator Mike Rose and/or the attorney for the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee if we are correct. Or better yet, ask Vicki Turetsky, Commissioner for the Office of Child Support Enforcement in the Department of Health and Human Services whether we are correct. Both of them have law degrees from very prestigious institutions.

Of course, Ms. Turetsky and Senator Rose may not be any more concerned about the fact that the South Carolina General Assembly and the CSED of the Department of Social Services are doing so little to collect the $2 Billion+ that is owed to non-custodial parents in South Carolina than is South Carolina DSS Director Dr. Kathleen Hayes. Both of them have known about this problem for over eight months and Dr. Hayes has been aware of the problem for even longer. Yet all of them have done nothing to address the problem.

In her defense, Ms. Turetsky is an equal opportunity neglector of child support recipients--nationwide over $100 Billion is owed in child support arrears, but despite the availability of Draconian laws to enforce compliance with Support Orders, the arrears are increasing rather than decreasing.

Hopefully, the New Year will be better for everyone and those in a position to do so will actually do something to help the families who are going without support rather than just paying lip service to the problem.

Earl Capps wrote at http://earlcapps.blogspot.com/2010/12/meet-2010-joker-of-year.html:

Cyndi Mosteller: For years, she was an extreme and polarizing figure in GOP circles. Well known for blurring the line between religion and politics in order to support her candidates and personal agendas, she was becoming increasingly marginalized by those who saw her erratic, vicious and self-serving tactics as toxic.

This year, Mosteller found a way to accelerate her political retirement when she teamed up with Liana Orr, another high-maintenance outcast from GOP politics, to run a shadowy attack group which attacked Governor-elect Nikki Haley with undisclosed campaign contributions. In the end, the failure to be candid about her motives and who backed those efforts have done much to put her out to political pasture. Her divisive style of politics won’t be missed.

Contrary to Mr. Capps' belief, the days of Cyndi Mosteller's political influence are hardly in the past. For example, she is on the Board of Heritage Community Services to which the State of South Carolina is poised to hand another $800,000 of the people's money. And this appears to be in addition to the $800,000 federal grant DHEC is apparently steering to Heritage. In the meantime, while DSS is being slowly starved for funding, Ms. Mosteller's brother, South Carolina State Senator Chip Campsen, helped deny the South Carolina Child Support Enforcement Division South Carolina one of its most powerful tools by voting against the enactment of mandatory new hire reporting in South Carolina. This may be one reason that according to the United States Office of Child Support Enforcement the Arrears Amounts Due in South Carolina increased last year by 5% to $1,234,595,152.

SOUTH CAROLINA DSS FINES MOUNT

Will Folks writes in "DSS Fines Mount," “Such is the game of unfunded federal mandates,” thereby implying that South Carolina is being victimized by the federal government’s decision to fine the state for its failure to comply with an unfunded mandate. In our view, that implication is absurd.

The federal mandate to implement a computerized child support tracking and collection system is not exactly unfunded. DSS records show that South Carolina has received $79,901,279 to date for implementation of the system. Moreover, had the system been implemented and the child support collections rate increased, South Carolina would have been eligible for incentive bonuses. This is in addition to the approximately $80,000,000 in yearly federal Title IV-D (child support enforcement) and Title IV-A Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funding that South Carolina receives and which is currently at risk. (Click here for an explanation of how much South Carolina receives in Title IV-D and TANF funding on an annual basis and why that funding is at risk.)

Rather than complaining about the big bad federal government, maybe the South Carolina General Assembly should make some bona fide attempts to actually understand federal law and to enact mandated legislation. And, rather than “rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic,” maybe Governor Nikki Haley should appoint a DSS Director who is not only committed to reform, but who actually understands how to implement mandated reform. And maybe that person should give some serious thought on how to avoid losing $80,000,000 a year in federal funding.

Incidentally, our disagreement with Mr. Folks should in one way be construed as a personal attack against him. We sometimes link to his site and often read the postings to his site. We even sometimes agree with his positions. For example, we agree that DSS is severely mismanaged. We just don't agree that the mandates contained in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act are either unreasonable or unfunded. Essentially, the federal government said to South Carolina, "We are tired of sending so much AFDC money to you each month, so we are going to provide you with a way to make South Carolina fathers pay to support their own children. Additionally, we will fund child support collection costs as well as most of the costs of a computerized tracking and collection system. The catch is that you have to both implement the computerized program and pay for part of the costs. And if you don't implement the program we will start taking our money back and may even stop sending money to you."

We have no idea why these systems cost so much money. Nor do we have any idea of how much they cost to run on an annual basis, though other states can probably provide that information. We do know, however, that the federal government has given South Carolina about $80 Million to build the system and that the federal government sends South Carolina about $40 Million each year to pay for collection of child support; this is on top of the unmonitored "fines" the various family courts access against "deadbeat dads" for child support collection as well as the interest generated on both child support payments and the collected, but undistributed, child support payments paid through the Family Court. We also know that South Carolina's arrearages are increasing, whereas other states who have instituted federally-mandated programs have seen an increase in collections and a decrease in arrearages.

Click here to review the Office of Child Support Enforcement State Child Support Boxscores for FY 2009.

South Carolina is falling further behind. According to these boxcores the Arrears Amounts Due in South Carolina has increased by 5% to $1,234,595,152. Compare this to Pennsylvania, where the Arrears Amounts Due has decreased by 14.3% to $1,259,004,982.

What is it that Pennsylvania knows that South Carolina does not know?

Obviously, we are convinced that South Carolina’s failure to enact legislation mandating New Hire Reporting puts the State at risk of losing federal funding (see, "SOUTH CAROLINA'S FAILURE TO PASS SENATE BILL 1257--WHY IT MATTERS"). Still, those who care about this topic may want to obtain Senator Michael Rose's views on why he proposed S. 1257, why S. 1257 was amended in Committee, why it failed to pass the South Carolina Senate, and what he thinks the possible ramifications of the Senate's actions could be. As we noted in "THIRD READING OF SOUTH CAROLINA SENATE BILL 1257 FAILS," we are baffled by the Senate's actions. One would think that the South Carolina General Assembly learned its lesson in Jim Hodges, et. al. v. Tommy G. Thompson et. al.

Click here to read about Mr. Bardes' experience. According to Mr. Bardes, "The cost of incarnation in Charleston County is around $35,000 a year per inmate. Charleston County spends a $1,000,000 a year just to house innocent fathers that are down in their luck. It would be far cheaper to just pay the indigent parent child support payments directly."

We are unable to verify whether Mr. Bardes' figures are correct. However, his claims do raise the question "WHO IS BENEFITING FROM THE INCARCERATION OF 'DEADBEATS'?"