Maryland's Paternity Acknowledgment Program: Participant Entries Into the Public Child Support and Welfare Systems (original) (raw)
Related papers
Clearinghouse Review, 2003
Low-income custodial parents also desperately need legal assistance in navigating the child support system and in enforcing support obligations. For an excellent discussion of the need for legal aid programs to represent both custodial and noncustodial parents in child support matters, see Paula Roberts, Child Support-an Important but Often Overlooked Issue for Low-Income Clients, in POVERlY LAw MANuAL FOR THE NEW LAWYER 196 (2002). For an important discussion of the need for notice and hearing rights in child support distribution cases, see Paula Roberts, If You Don't Know There's a Problem, How Can You Find a Solution?: The Need for Notice and Hearing Rights in Child Support Distribution Cases, 36 CLEARINGHOUSE REv. 422 (Nov.-Dec. 2002), 2 See 42 U.S.c.A. § 657(a)(1)-(2) (West, WESTLA W through Pub. 1. No. 108-6, approved Feb. 13, 2003). Some states pass through a small amount of this assigned child support to families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and disregard the passedthrough child support in calculating eligibility for other means-tested benefits. See id. § 657(a)(1) (providing authority to pass through the state share of the assigned support). Maryland does not pass through or disregard any child support. For a state-by-state chart on child support disregard policies, see State Policy Documentation Project, Treatment of Current Child Support Payments (Feb. 2000), at www.spdp.orgltanf/financiallchiidsupport.PDF.
Enforcing Child Support: Are States Doing the Job?
1994
This report examines state-by-state child support data to determine the impact of child support legislation over the last decade. In the text portion, the report compares data provided by the states in fiscal years 1983 and 1992. It finds that while states have made some improvements over the decade, performance in many critical areas has remained the same, improved only moderately, or even declined. The remainder of the report consists of two appendices, which provide background on the United States child support enforcement system and charts for each state and the District of Columbia that measure progress on eight key indicators of success for children. These indicators are: (1) caseload per worker; (2) administrative expenditure per case; (3) the number of absent parents located as a percentage of total caseload; (4) paternity performance; (5) percent of cases needing a support order in which a support order was established; .(6) percent of total caseload in which any collection was made; (7) average annual collection for cases with any collection; and (8) amount of child support collected for each administrative dollar spent. (MDM)
Family Court Review, 2018
Today, there is consensus that the current system of allocating and enforcing child support obligations does not work well for disadvantaged families, most of which are nonmarital. Nonmarital children are less likely to have support orders established than marital children, and they are much less likely to experience full payment. In this article, we report data on child support awards and enforcement associated with a sample of paternity actions brought in 2008 or 2010 in St. Joseph County, Indiana. We found that child support practice in St. Joseph County promotes limited contact between children and their absent fathers, nonpayment of prior support obligations, and the accrual of arrears that can never be paid. These results strongly support recent changes in federal child support regulations and programs that postdate the orders in our study. Our results also demonstrate both the need for additional reforms and the difficulties that lie ahead as the states begin to grapple with applying the new standards. Key Points for the Family Court Community: • Child support enforcement among the very disadvantaged neither makes fathers more responsible nor collects significant money • It also makes contact with their children less likely and results in the amassing of arrearages that will never be paid • While recent federal legal changes move in the right direction, we fear that local agencies are still unable to calculate incomes when none can be shown, and, as with credit for other paid support orders, resort to shortcuts that are inaccurate and unproductive
Child Support and Welfare: An Analysis of the Issues. Final Report
1983
This report presents results from a comprehensive study of child support issues. Using information from three data bases, the following findings emerged: (1) marital status is a strong predictor of receipt of welfare and child support; (2) socioeconomic characteristics of the mother and her family influence welfare and child support outcomes; (3) employed mothers are less likely to receive child support and mothers receiving child support are less likely to receive welfare; (4) the income level of the absent father has a strong influence on whether child support payments are received; (5) some success has been made in locating absent parents, especially those who are legally married, but success with enforcing their support payment orders is mixed; (6) court ordered agreements are associated with greater probability of receiving child support payments; (7) intercepting state tax refunds for child support payments has been successful; and (8) automated procedures to monitor cases are efficient. Data are presented in 35 tables and six appendices. (VM)
Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services
This article provides an ecological model of child support facilitation through broad efforts to maintain high rates of paternity establishment via agency–university collaboration. The study utilized administrative data (2,208 electronic records from the Bureau of Health Statistics) on voluntary paternity affidavits (VPA) rejected by the Iowa Department of Public Health. These records represented all rejected VPAs from 70 hospitals in Iowa for 6 months in 2017. Results indicated that the majority of VPAs were not accepted for minor errors (78%) such as missing information rather than incorrect information. Results also indicated variation among hospitals and hospital regions in the reasons for rejection. Outreach to hospitals targeting affidavit completion is a potential step for increasing paternity establishment.