Partnering with Insurers to Improve the Lives of Children

Overview – Child Support Enforcement

A third of all births in the United States are children born to unmarried mothers. Over a quarter of all children live in single-parent families and a third of the children in single-parent families live below the poverty line. Of all families owed child support, less than half receive the full amount due and a quarter receives nothing at all.

The goal of the Child Support Enforcement Program, established in 1975 under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, is to ensure that children receive financial and emotional support from both parents. The program helps to strengthen families and reduce welfare dependency by placing responsibility for supporting children on their parents.

Designed as a joint Federal, State and local partnership, the Child Support Enforcement Program involves 54 State and territorial jurisdictions, each with its own unique laws and procedures. States administer the child support program while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides funding and technical assistance to States through the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE).

OCSE operates the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS), a program that encompasses several databases, including the National Directory of New Hires, to locate noncustodial parents and their assets. The FPLS also assists States in performing collection and enforcement services through the Federal Tax and Administrative Offset Programs that collect child support by offsetting Federal income tax refunds and other Federal payments, the Multistate Financial Institution Data Match Program that identifies assets belonging to individuals delinquent in their child support obligation, and the Passport Denial Program that denies passports to obligors owing more than $2,500 in child support. To accomplish these efforts, OCSE works closely with other Federal agencies and the private sector, including financial institutions and employers.

Legal Foundation – Insurance Matching

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, more commonly known as “welfare reform,” and required States to pass laws providing State Child Support Enforcement (CSE) agencies with the authority to subpoena "any financial or other information needed to establish, modify or enforce a child support order and to impose penalties for failure to respond to such a subpoena.” 42 U.S.C. 666(c)(1)((B). See also 42 U.S.C. 652(a)(11) and 654(a)(9)(E). State CSE agencies also have the authority to obtain access, subject to safeguards on privacy and information security, and subject to the nonliability of entities that afford such access, to government and and certain records held by private entities, including information held by financial institutions. 42 U.S.C. 666(c)(1)(D). Thus, without the necessity of obtaining an order from any other judicial or administrative tribunal, current law authorizes a State CSE agency to subpoena information from insurers about insurance claims, settlements, awards and payments, to enforce a child support order.

Centralized Insurance Match

Section 7306 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 amended Section 452 of the Social Security Act to authorize comparisons of information concerning individuals owing past-due child support with information maintained by insurers (or their agents) concerning insurance claims, settlements, awards, and payments as outlined in the legislative language below, which clearly addresses insurer non-liability for disclosing insurance-related information for child support reporting purposes.

1. COMPARISONS WITH INSURANCE INFORMATION.
1. IN GENERAL, The Secretary, through the Federal Parent Locator Service, may —
1. compare information concerning individuals owing past-due support with information maintained by insurers (or their agents) concerning insurance claims, settlements, awards, and payments; and
2. furnish information resulting from the data matches to the State agencies responsible for collecting child support from the individuals.
2. LIABILITY, An insurer (including any agent of an insurer) shall not be liable under any Federal or State law to any person for any disclosure provided for under this subsection, or for any other action taken in good faith in accordance with this subsection.

OCSE is charged with designing, developing and implementing an efficient, cost effective and centralized match between information maintained by OCSE and information maintained by insurers or their agents. To streamline the insurance match and reduce the burden on insurers, OCSE is exploring the use of existing repositories of claims data (e.g., Insurance Service Office's ClaimSearch database) to accomplish the match rather than matching with individual insurance companies. For insurers not reporting claims data to a centralized repository, it may be necessary for OCSE and those insurers to explore other options to accomplish the data match.

Insurance Match – Purpose and Goals

The purpose of the insurance match is to identify pending insurance claims payable to individuals delinquent in their child support obligation. The insurance match legislation grants OCSE the authority to conduct the match with insurers and provide the information to the State CSE agencies responsible for collecting child support from the delinquent obligors. This legislation provides a new tool to assist State CSE agencies in their efforts to collect delinquent child support. The goals of the centralized insurance match include:

For additional information on the Office of Child Support Enforcement, Federal Parent Locator Service and Federal Collections and Enforcement programs please visit our website at www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse.

Insurance Match – Library