Child Support

Child support programs use various strategies called “enforcement tools” to collect critical monetary support for custodial families from noncustodial parents. The enforcement of child support is intended to encourage parental responsibility so that children receive financial, emotional, and medical support from both parents, even when they live in separate households.

While child support agencies have acknowledged the rise in substance use among noncustodial parents, there is little to no research that has looked specifically at this population with substance use issues and the effects of that use on child support outcomes, including payment patterns and arrears accumulation.

For child support programs, the emergence of the gig economy presents a new dimension to the longstanding challenge of establishing and enforcing child support orders for noncustodial parents working outside traditional salaried employment – in jobs that are often temporary, part-time, and contingent.

Despite broad agreement that the child support program has performed well since the passage of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) in 1998, questions remain over whether the current measures will continue to drive better performance on outcomes that reflect the child support program’s core mission.

States have the option to require recipients of child care subsidies and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to cooperate with child support agencies seeking to establish paternity and support orders; and to enforce child support obligations as a condition of eligibility.

This analysis builds on the ASPE publication on child support cooperation requirements to determine the overlap in the populations of custodial and noncustodial parents with and without formal child support orders, that are eligible for both Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and subsidized child care (CCDF).  The data used in the infographic are based on TRIM3 analysis of th

This project brought together policymakers, practitioners and evaluators in October 2017 to identify key policy research questions in the child support program.  The discussions, coupled with a series of informant interviews from 2016, led to the development of the research agenda.  It is a framework for the broader child support community to collectively answer pressing policy questi

States have flexibility to require a person that receives SNAP or subsidized child care to cooperate with the child support program.  This infographic introduces the child support cooperation policy variation across the states and then presents characteristic information about the custodial and noncustodial parents that may be subject to cooperation requirements in SNAP and subsidized chil

A father’s incarceration can represent a serious threat to economic stability for his children and family, yet little is known about earnings and child support payments among justice-involved men over the course of incarceration and release.