Interstate Child Support

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed state child support agencies' processes to obtain and verify critical information needed to pursue interstate cases.

GAO found that: (1) initiating agencies and caseworkers often did not pursue interstate cases because information about the absent parent was missing; (2) initiating agencies could reduce processing time and increase collections by using enforcement options to avoid or minimize other states' involvement; (3) 67 percent of the cases caseworkers in 10 states received lacked the absent parent's correct address, and up to 78 percent lacked correct employment information; (4) caseworkers experienced delays averaging 6 months in processing cases referred by other states with missing or inaccurate information; (5) initiating caseworkers did not use available services to obtain absent-parent information because their response was too slow; (6) the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) had not established state response time frames on cases that had not been referred for enforcement action; (7) due to the lack of addresses, Maryland did not pursue 20 percent and Connecticut did not pursue 37 percent of their interstate cases; and (8) when initiating agencies referred cases with inaccurate information to other states, the receiving states generally wasted resources, encountered delays, and were unlikely to collect support.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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