View Research by Author - Tess Tannehill

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/TessTannehill

In 2003, the Texas Office of Attorney General fundamentally altered the process of establishing child support orders, going from a highly judicial process of establishing orders to a process that establishes most orders administratively. It also substantially improved the issuance of income withholding orders. This report describes the implementation of these reforms and measures their impact. It finds that, after the reforms were implemented, the amount of time it takes to establish child support orders and income withholding orders on newly opened cases declined significantly and the amount of arrears assessed on newly established orders declined significantly, suggesting a highly successful initiative.

In FY 2007, the national child support program served 17 million children and collected $25 billion in child support, yet little is known about the underlying demographic and economic characteristics of the individuals served. To remedy this lack of information, Courtland Consulting and the Urban Institute, under contract with the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, surveyed nine state child support programs about their caseloads. We found that state child support programs are able to provide considerable amounts of information about their clients, but key characteristics proved difficult to obtain, such as the poverty status of the families served.

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