The recession has had an adverse impact on child support payment collections in California. Child support payments fell in 2009. Statistics for 2010 won't be out for months, but Los Angeles divorce lawyers believe that with the economy still stagnant, those collections were down last year too. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Offices of Child Support Enforcement, this decline has been seen around the country.
This decline in child support collections has been seen even though states have enhanced their ability to collect child support checks on behalf of custodial parents. That's because of high unemployment rates, leading to a drop in child support payment checks. Noncustodial parents are also becoming more successful at obtaining court-ordered payment reductions.
According to official estimates, both the state and federal governments collected approximately $26.4 billion in child support payments in 2009. That is down about .7% from a year earlier. In fact, this is the first drop since records began to be maintained in 1976.
In California, $2.3 billion was collected in child support payments in the fiscal year 2010. That is a 1% drop from one year earlier. According to the California Health and Human Services agency, approximately 57.7% of California's child support cases were in arrears at some point during 2010. That is an increase from 56.2% for the previous year.
There was also a decline in California child support payments through wage withholding. These account for about 60% of all child-support payments. Such payments dropped 5.5% from the previous year. Payments taken from unemployment checks increased dramatically by 62%, reflecting the state of the economy last year.
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