Supportkids Child Support Collections Surpass $320 million

Supportkids, the nation’s largest private child support enforcement company working directly with families, announced today that the company has exceeded $320 million dollars in child support collections. The number of families that the company has helped continues to increase as well — more than 50,000 families have received child support through Supportkids’ services.

Why Are Private Sector Options Needed?

As of the end of fiscal year 2005, $106 billion in past-due child support was owed nationally, and almost $12 billion in current child support went uncollected. Private companies are an important option for those families who have not had success collecting their child support through government agencies. In fact, these are the families who turn to private companies for help. The average Supportkids client has not received a child support payment in over four years, and according to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report, over 95% of the custodial parents who turn to private child support enforcement companies have unsuccessfully tried to collect their child support through the government system.

The Economics of Child Support

The picture is not likely to get any better for parents struggling to get the child support owed their children. Government child support collection efforts are funded through both state and federal programs. The Federal Deficit Reduction Act signed into law in 2006 will reduce federal funding of state child support agencies by $4.8 billion through 2015. On average, state agencies collect four dollars in child support for every dollar they spend. If the reduction in federal support is not made up at the state level, collection rates by government agencies will likely suffer.

Keys to Success

Why are private child support agencies able to collect when the government has been unsuccessful? According to the GAO report, private child support agencies have much smaller caseloads compared to their government counterparts. Supportkids employs a staff of 175, including specialists in skip tracing and child support enforcement. Supportkids has collected child support for families all across the country by using many of the same tools used by government agencies to enforce child support orders, including wage withholding, placing liens on property, and when necessary, pursuing legal remedies through the use of a nationwide network of attorneys. However, the individual case attention is the single biggest reason why private child support agencies like Supportkids are successful on cases in which the government sector has failed to collect.