Child Support Compliance Goes Beyond Income Withholding

Income withholding orders are not the only way that child support enforcement can affect employers, two Tennessee Department of Human Services officials said May 13.

The department, which enforces the state’s child support program, has several methods for collecting unpaid child support, said Daphne Davidson, senior associate counsel for the department. Income withholding orders are the primary method, but the state can collect child support through unemployment insurance payments and tax refunds, she said.

Tennessee may also revoke state licenses like driver’s, hunting, or fishing licenses to coerce individuals into making child support payments, she added. Some of the licenses might affect an individual’s occupation, which in turn could affect their ability to perform their work for an employer, she said. Some examples include licenses for barbers or hairstylists, commercial driver’s licenses, doctor’s licenses, and law licenses, she said.

“We want them to keep their job because that’s important,” said Emily Gregg, director of policy, compliance, and case resolution for the department. “So, if it is their [commercial driver’s license], we will work with them. If you happen to have an employee and this does impact your business, please tell them to call their state child support office, no matter what state, so they can work out a deal to keep their license.”

Davidson and Gregg spoke at PayrollOrg’s 44th Payroll Congress in Nashville, Tennessee.

State child support programs work in tandem with new-hire reporting programs, Davidson said. Employers must report new hires to the state, and the state passes that information to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, which then distributes the information to all states, she said. States use the information received from OCSE to create wage assignments and income withholding orders, she said.

Because OCSE receives new-hire information from every state and distributes it to each state child support agency, employers operating in more than one state can choose one state where they have employees working and report all new hires to that state, she added. The other option is to report new hires to the state in which they are working, but this requires knowledge of each state’s new-hire reporting procedures and can be more difficult for multistate employers than simply reporting all new hires through a single state, she explained.

Employers should also remember to report temporary or seasonal employees as new hires, Davidson said.

“Let’s say [an employee] works for you over the summer, they are gone during the school year, and then they come back the next summer. Don’t just pick up that [old] income withholding order and start garnishing based on the order from back then,” Gregg explained. “The reason is that things change. You don’t know if that’s the right amount still.”

Instead, employers should inform the state when they hire employees and when employees leave employment, she said. If an employer re-hires an employee, the employer must report that as a new hire to the state, and the state will issue a new income withholding order if necessary, she said.

Even if an employer reports that an employee is separating from employment, Tennessee does not issue an order to terminate the existing the income withholding order, Gregg said. The state only sends a termination order if the individual’s child is emancipated or the individual has paid all their child support in arrears, added Davidson.

“If we close you as an employer, you’re not going to get a [termination order],” Gregg said. “We just know that they are no longer working there, maybe because you told us that or because we’re not getting payments anymore or because they have a new employer.”