To comply with federal regulations, a standardized cost recovery fee has been established in Kansas for collection of child support for families who do not receive public assistance.

The standard fee, which takes effect April 1, will be 2 percent of collections made on behalf of the family receiving child support enforcement services and will normally be collected by retaining a portion of collections as they are received and distributed. No fee will be charged for support collections made for children on public assistance.

The collection fee was the result of a 1994 ruling by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement which found the Kansas Child Support Collection program was out of compliance with federal requirements. Federal regulations require cost recovery fees be established statewide. In other words, if any part of the collection program charges a fee, the whole program must do so. Kansas was given one year to establish statewide uniformity.

For many years, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and some district court trustees have not charged a fee for collection of non-public assistance child support However, some of the 17 district court trustees collect fees in varying amounts, up to 5 percent. Under state statute, SRS must contract with district court trustees for child support collection services.

Without statewide fees, SRS stood to lose nearly $1 million in federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children funds in just the first year of non-compliance. Continued non-compliance with the federal regulation would result in accelerating fiscal penalties.

Because SRS was unsuccessful in persuading either the Kansas courts or the 1994 Kansas Legislature to prohibit fees in all non-public assistance child support cases and because of the devastating impact increasing federal penalties would have on the financial assistance available to poor children in Kansas, SRS chose to work with the Office of Judicial Administration (on behalf of the court trustees) to implement a compromise fee of 2 percent except in counties qualifying for a reduced fee.

We were placed in a situation where we must charge a fee to avoid the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding for poor children," said Acting SRS Secretary Janet Schalansky. Historically, SRS has not charged any fee in child support cases. However, most court trustees, with whom we are required by Kansas statute to contract, have always charged up to a 5 percent fee taken from child support collected. Working with the courts, we were able to negotiate a uniform 2 percent fee."

After April 1, the only different fee schedule for non-public assistance child support collections will be in Johnson County, where the fee is set at 1 percent up to a $3 maximum per month per order. The fee in Johnson County is lower than the basic fee for the rest of the state to insure that fee income coming in is lower than the actual costs of collections. Under federal law, cost-recovery fees cannot exceed costs.

The new Kansas fee schedule has a procedure for identifying any other county that qualifies for reduced fees in future years, and for reviewing whether the Johnson County exemption should continue.

Candace Shively, Acting Commissioner of Income Support and Medical Services, the SRS commission which administers the Child Support Enforcement Program, said the agency has always tried to avoid charging a fee for collecting either public assistance or non-public assistance child support.

Shively pointed out that SRS has been paying the costs of providing all child support services, including fees charged by the federal government for Internal Revenue Service offsets and fees charged by the Kansas Department of Administration for state income tax refund offset.

We have always felt the purpose of the entire program was to benefit children and to provide a way for families to remain independent of public assistance," she said. SRS has done what it could to avoid imposing a non-public assistance fee. But we are now in a situation where we must charge a fee to avoid the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding that helps poverty-level children and families."

Page Last Updated: May 29, 2001