Child Support checks now getting processed faster

After a rocky start in August, the state is now getting more than 2,200 child support checks on their way to parents every day.

Under federal mandates, the state took over the task of collecting and disbursing child support payments in some 200,000 Nevada cases in August. But like many other parts of the NOMADS computer system for welfare and child support, the State Collections and Disbursement Unit didn't work as well as it needed to.

The result: Hundreds of child support checks that were supposed to get out the door by the next day were taking up to a week, bringing the state numerous complaints from those who needed the money to pay bills.

Welfare Administrator Mike Willden said the system has improved since the first couple weeks in August.

"For the first two weeks of October, every day has been in the two-day time frame except for the Oct. 6 upload, which took three days," he said.

Willden said his best indicator that the checks are getting to the parents who need them is that the number of complaints is way down.

"We continue to refine the process, but overall we're pretty happy we seem to have worked out the initial bugs," he said.

In the past, individual counties handled the payments from parents, processing them and sending the money to the other parent to help support their children. But with new federal rules, the state had to take over for everyone because child support is counted as a deduction against welfare and other entitlements a family may be receiving.

Willden said part of the problem is that mailing everything to a state center, having it confirmed by NOMADS and then mailing out the checks takes a couple days longer than it used to take the more efficient counties to get the checks to the mother raising the children.

Most of the delay comes from requirements that NOMADS make sure the money is going to the right person and, if that person is getting other federal money through welfare or another entitlement, that the state or federal government gets reimbursed.

"There are some built-in delays," said Willden. "Our clientele, we tell them you have to realize there are about three days mailing time and we tell people it's really going to be about five working days after we get the check."

The part of the equation they can't control, said Willden, is the U.S. Postal Service.

"In fact, we've got about 20 test cases we're going to track to see how long it takes for the checks to get there," he said.

He said one problem in August was that employers, who send child support checks to the state under court orders, had to get used to sending the state the money instead of the counties. Many checks were delayed when county officials had to forward them to the state.

He said businesses are now getting used to the new system and to the information they have to provide so state workers can figure out who gets what money.

"Employers do one check and may not provide all the information we need to split that check among 10 child-support cases," said Willden. "The county may have known this employer for 10 years and they knew how to do it."

He said the other problem is a wife or girlfriend may write the check and it doesn't have the right name, court case number or the correct Social Security number for the recipient.

He said that's why the state has 240 checks workers haven't been able to figure out who should receive.

Surprisingly, he said, the state has also gotten $13,943 worth of bounced checks - not from parents, because they must send money orders or cashier's checks. He said the bounced checks were by "some very well-known companies."

"Two governmental agencies on here have bounced checks," he said, noting that both are outside Nevada.