ABSTRACT
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) requires all employers to report information about new employees to the state within 20 days of the date of hire. Individual states are able to establish even stricter reporting requirements. The main goal of the act is to help enforce child support rulings. Filed reports will help the states locate parents, establish an order, or enforce existing orders for child support. Consider the following:
One of two children in America will be raised in a single-parent household.
More than $34 billion is owed in past due child support to America's children.
The national recovery average of all child support owed is only 17 percent.
In most states, case workers and attorneys are swamped with huge caseloads that take months to review.
It may take months or even years before a state agency can help collect child support that is past due.
