The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 68 % of child support cases had arrears owed in 2003, a 15 % increase from 53 % in 1999 . It is claimed that some of these arrearage cases are due to administrative practices such as imputing income to parents where it does not exist and issuing default orders of support.
12.
Sherri Z . Heller, Ed . D, Commissioner of U . S . Office of Child Support Enforcement stated, " We need to be more aggressive about leveraging older debt owed to the government as an incentive to obtain more reliable payments of current support to families . " Towards this end, the Social Security Administration provides up to $ 4.1 billion in financial incentives to states that create support and arrearage orders, and then collect.
