Collection of Delinquent Child Support Is on the Rise

At a time when Orange County is busy devising ways to move its residents from “welfare rolls to payrolls,” a critical component of that effort--child-support collections--jumped dramatically last year, topping $90 million for the first time.

Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, whose family support division obtains and enforces child custody orders, said recent reforms in that division enabled collections to rocket 57% since 1995 and 22% last year alone.

“The children of Orange County are the main beneficiaries,” Capizzi said, “as child support flows through our office and into their lives.”

The family support division has 150,000 active cases, involving at least 500,000 parents and children, said Susan Delarue, chief of the division.

“We touch the lives of nearly 20% of the population in Orange County,” Delarue said. “Child-support programs are second only to the schools in their impact on the children of California.”

In the new environment of limiting welfare benefits and forcing recipients into jobs, the necessity of making parents financially responsible for their children has become even greater, Delarue said.

If welfare recipients “can find employment and get child support, maybe they can meet their own needs.”

The dramatic increase in money collected suggests the department’s reforms are working, Capizzi and Delarue said.

In recent years, complaints prompted the department and the Board of Supervisors to commission a study to improve service and collections.

Greater automation, more training, the cultivation of caseworkers who can handle a multiplicity of tasks and the recruitment of family law attorneys looking to spend careers in the field are largely responsible for the improvement, Delarue said.

But a sobering reality lies behind the numbers, Delarue acknowledged, suggesting how much more needs to be accomplished.

First, only 61% of the current cases have court orders, which give workers greater power to find and obtain child support from parents reluctant to make payments. With orders, for example, workers can attach wages, tap into retirement accounts and seize tax refunds.

While the number of cases with court orders continues to rise, the percentage of those cases in which parents are actually making payments rose only slightly, from 18% to 19%, last year.

This means that out of the 91,000-plus cases in which court orders have been obtained, only 19% of those parents actually are paying.

That tiny increase, Delarue said, “is nothing to be especially proud of, to be honest with you. But if [making collections] was that simple, we wouldn’t need to exist.

“It is a very complicated process, and individuals go to great lengths to avoid paying their child support.”