For years, people owing child support relied on paper disability checks as a way of safeguard a portion of their benefits from states trying to collect back child support. But beginning next March, the Treasury Department will start paying benefits electronically and stop issuing paper checks.
That means that States, who for years have been able to freeze bank accounts but not reach paper checks, will be able to reach all benefits. (A separate Treasury Department rule, in place since last May in a preliminary form, guarantees States the power to freeze Social Security, disability and veterans’ benefits that have been deposited into those accounts.)
In many cases, the bills are decades old and the children long grown. Much of the money owed is interest and fees that add up when men are unable to pay because they are disabled, institutionalized or imprisoned.
Most of the money will go to governments, not to the children of the men with child support debts, independent analyses show. States are allowed to keep child support money as repayment for welfare previously provided for those children.
In a letter sent last week, the National Consumer Law Center and dozens of other groups called on the Social Security Administration to withdraw support for the rule.
“While both current and past due child support orders should be paid,” the letter said, it should not result “in the complete impoverishment of recipients” of federal benefits.