Federal requirements mandate that CSS maintain an Unreimbursed Assistance (URA) balance for current and former assistance households.
URA is the amount of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) expended to a custodial parent (CP) minus any child support payments that have been retained against TANF assigned child support balances. OSIS automatically calculates a URA for all current and former TANF case numbers to determine whether these assigned balances should retain for TANF reimbursement or issue to the CP. In order for TANF assigned child support balances to retain, the URA must have a positive net amount due. The net URA is the maximum amount of child support CSS can retain for TANF expenditures.
The URA is based upon the following premise: A CP who has received TANF in Oklahoma should only have one URA. This URA is comprised of the TANF expended for all the children in the home, regardless of whether the children have different fathers. Each CP can have multiple children associated with multiple Family Group Numbers (FGNs), but only one TANF expenditure calculation. The TANF expended for all children (on all TANF cases), and all assigned child support paid by all non-custodial parents (NCPs) is used to calculate the CP’s URA balance.
CSS is responsible for collecting only what each NCP is ordered to pay in their child support order. Therefore, it is possible that one NCP’s court ordered support could cover the entire URA balance. Remember, each NCP is only responsible to pay their court ordered support, and whether that money issues to the CP or is retained by State is a separate issue.