Absent parents pay up
The Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County set a monthly record in child support collections, tracking down $12.7 million in May from absent parents, a 17 percent increase from the May 2008 total.
Larry Scroggs, the court’s chief administrative officer and chief counsel, said the court is also on course to collect $125 million for the fiscal year that ends June 30, which would set its second annual record in a row.”I think in context, when you look at the overall economic situation, it’s quite an achievement,” he said.
But the workers who helped set the collection records won’t have time to bask in their glory.
Juvenile Court has been collecting child support payments under state contract. But the state declared months ago that the court fell short of standards on the amount of money it’s supposed to collect, and in February, Maximus Inc., based in Reston, Va., won the contract.
The company starts work July 1.
“There’s a lot of ironies in this story,” Scroggs said. “Coming off record performance for two years in a row, the court will no longer have the contract.”
Maximus plans to hire some of the employees handling child support cases now, but many will lose their jobs, Scroggs said.
Though Maximus will handle administration of much of the child support system, Juvenile Court will still hold hearings on child support matters.
New state grants mean Juvenile Court can increase the number of cases from 600 per week to as many as 800 per week, Scroggs said.
About 100,000 children in the Memphis area depend on child support payments funneled through the court, Scroggs said.
“Child support touches a lot of people’s lives,” said Tennessee Department of Human Services spokeswoman Michelle Mowery Johnson. “A lot of people’s lives. It’s critical for children, to keep them out of poverty.”
Shelby County’s record collections reflect a staffing boost from last year, when the court used new state funding to hire eight attorneys and 42 case workers, bringing the total child support administrative staff to 242, Scroggs said.
The extra manpower helped tackle a massive problem.
In Shelby County, there are nearly 116,000 active child support cases, which Scroggs says is far higher than other metro areas in the state.
Most of the child support cases that Juvenile Court handles involve unmarried couples, and Shelby County has a very high percentage of out-of-wedlock births. In 2007, the percentage stood at 59 percent, according to the Urban Child Institute.
Collection efforts statewide are up, too, Johnson said. Aggressive techniques boosted collections in the first 11 months of the fiscal year by 5 percent, to $510.3 million.
The state is garnishing wages, seizing bank accounts, revoking driver’s licenses and even taking licenses to hunt and fish.
“It’s amazing how people come up with the money when we threaten to take their hunting and fishing licenses,” she said.
How child support works
Cases land in the child support system when a parent doesn’t pay the agreed-upon child support amount following a divorce, or when an unmarried parent taking care of a child seeks support.
In most cases, the parents who owe money are men, and the child support system first tries to prove through the father’s acknowledgement or through DNA testing that he is responsible.
The case then goes before a judge, who decides how much the absent parent should pay. The amount depends on factors including the parent’s income and how much time he or she spends with the child.