We have more flexibility in handling assignments from relief unemployment benefits coming through CSS. CSS state office Finance reached out to Team Finance recently. Please see the details below.
Currently Child Support Services sends a file to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC) of noncustodial parents who owe child support for the purpose of collecting child support when a noncustodial parent receives unemployment benefits.
When there is a court ordered payment plan in place, the OSIS analyzer determines what amount should be sent to CSS by OESC, using the formula of monthly ordered amount × 12 ÷ 52 or total balance (depending upon existing case status), the information is written to a file and sent to the OESC. This is based upon the business practice at OESC of issuing weekly checks for unemployment. When there is no established payment plan, this can occur in an arrears only case, CSS transmits the total balance to the OESC and a ceiling of 50% of the benefit allowance would be imposed. Typically, the noncustodial parent contacts CSS immediately upon the first intercept to establish a payment plan. When the new payment plan is established, that amount is sent to OESC as the new payment amount.
With the implementation of the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, some recipients of unemployment benefits qualify for an additional weekly payment of $600. Guidance from the Department of Labor instructed OESC to deduct child support payments from this additional weekly payment.
Unemployment Insurance Program Letter NO. 15-20.
The effect is that CSS is receiving twice the amount of child support from these noncustodial parents each week. In some cases, the total amount received in a month could exceed the established payment plan.
Typically, once the payment plan for a noncustodial parent is met each month, any additional payments received would be applied to child support debt. This is applied to private balances first (owed to the custodial parent) and then state debt.
There is no law requiring funds received from this source be retained in excess of the monthly payment plan. The CSS Management Team has determined that under present circumstances it would be best to refund any amounts received from unemployment benefits, beyond the established monthly payment plan amount, to the noncustodial parent. To do this, CSS will implement programming that will send unemployment payments to an undistributed file once the payment plan has been met for a given month. From there, CSS Finance staff will manually review the cases for issuing refunds to the noncustodial parent. If this happens, it will typically occur near the middle or end of any given month for a noncustodial parent. Once the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments are no longer in play, we will revert to our normal processes and programming.
We hope to have the new programming developed, tested and implemented by the end of April.
Refunds are issued to a debit card. If the customer already has a debit card the refund will go to their existing card. If they do not, a new one will issue with the refund and the process takes approximately 10 days. The card must be pinned in order to access the funds on the card. If the card is returned or does not get pinned in 75 days, no additional refunds will be processed, the money will be returned to CSS after 90 days and pended. It will release once the card shows pinned in the system. If a custodial parent is also a non-custodial parent on a different case, the refunds and issuances will go to the same card.