Setting Appropriate Orders: A Child Support Best Practice Program

About the Program

Category: Human Services (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

The Orange County Department of Child Support Services’ Research and Reporting Unit (R&R) completed a large comprehensive study to increase child support payments for families by recommending best practices in setting appropriate child support order amounts. The county launched a study to determine the effectiveness of child support services, to guide legislative and administrative practices in setting child support guidelines in order to maximize collections while supporting healthy family relationships. Those goals support efficient use of limited governmental resources, as fair orders promote family harmony and cost less to administer. Non-Custodial (NCP) parents fall into child support arrears, and make less child support payments if child support monthly order amounts are greater than 19% of NCP’s gross income. For NCP’s with no reported income, determining an order based on a fictional income value produces minimal future child support payments. CSS is sharing key best practices with local, state, and national child support professionals to increase child support payments which include: 1) spend time to determine actual income to set child support orders 2) use study’s payment predictability information to set appropriate orders 3) modify existing orders to appropriate levels to increase payments, and 4) tailor an outreach program to educate customers on payment modification.