It has become the dreaded chore that make even adults whine: balancing
the checkbook. No one enjoys adding up
the costs of the electric and cable bill, grocery store tab, insane fuel
receipt and rent. Even the fun purchases
of clothing, books and dinners out end in a downer when the total on the
right-hand side begins to dwindle.
These days families have to work hard to play hard with the high costs
and newest trends that lure kids in a 15 second commercial. With the economy in the downward spiral,
single parent families are feeling the pinch in their pocket even more. So when the child support check doesn’t come
in the mail, times get really tough.
Giving Custodial Parents the
Help they Need
To ensure the custodial parents will receive the court mandated child
support, the government developed a child support enforcement program. The CSE
includes services like locating non-custodial parents, establishing paternity,
developing support orders, collecting support payments and services for
non-custodial parents. The state’s
individual programs get involved in child support cases when the noncustodial
parent falls behind or has not made payments. The programs help locate the parent and ensure the child support
payments are made by suspending driver’s licenses or withholding money from a
paycheck or income tax refund.
In 2005, Congress passed the federal Deficit Reduction Act to help
enhance the child support enforcement program. The bill was also passed to help slow the growth of benefit programs
including Medicaid and student loan subsidies be requiring states collect a
mandatory annual $25 fee for families not considered Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF) in cases exceeding $500 in collections.
States had the option of paying the fee by paying the cost
out-of-pocket, charging the custodial parent or billing the noncustodial
parent; in return, the state gets a third of total collected through the
fee. Most of the states chose to charge
the custodial parent, including Pennsylvania,
whose governor signed the bill in May for the child support fee.
The state passed a law that will cover the fee for parents who receive
yearly child support payments less than $2,000 but require those who get more
to pay. A welfare department
spokeswoman, Stacey Witalec, told the York Daily Record
that the state budget was tight; the state couldn’t afford to pay the full fee
of $2.6 million in the fiscal year of 2007-08 and $3.2 million the next
year. State officials decided they could
rely on the custodial parent to pay the fee.
Legislation Proposed to Retract
the Child Support Fee Bill
Within the couple months the bill has been on the books, it has already
received opposition. Representative Kate
Harper is working hard to repeal
the Child Support Tax. She feels the
fee is an unfair assessment on families that receive as little as $167 a month
in support payments. The money is better
spent on the welfare of the children, clothing, feeding and sheltering them.
Harper has been active in supporting the bill she introduced in August
to repeal the fee, including a 30-minute
program highlighting a press conference in honor of Child Support Awareness
Month last month. She hopes her efforts
win over the support of other representatives, but is not sure she will be able
to persuade the Democratically-controlled House to revisit the issue since the
fall session is shortened by the upcoming election.
Harper feels the state has enough resources to cover the full
cost. In comparison to the
multibillion-dollar budget the state has, in which 40 percent of it is devoted
to public welfare spending, Harper says the fee is minute.
