Fair Treatment and Child Support Payments

Background: Some child support agencies nationwide have started to incorporate procedural justice approaches (i.e., approaches premised on the notion that perceptions of process fairness affect an individual’s response to the process) into their work, given a growing body of evidence that how people are treated during legal processes affects their compliance with the law. Despite this growing emphasis on process fairness, we know little about factors related to whether parents believe their obligations are fair, or whether the perception of fairness is linked to later child support outcomes. This project addresses this gap.

Data and Methods: We utilize data from the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) program, an intervention that provided employment, parenting, case management and enhanced child support services in eight states to noncustodial parents who were behind in their payments and having employment difficulty. Parents were randomly assigned to receive the intervention (Es) or to the regular-services group (Rs). The CSPED impact report did not analyze the impact on fair treatment because it was not a confirmatory outcome; thus the analyses here are new.

Information on fair treatment comes from more than 3,300 parent responses to a follow-up survey asking them whether the child support program treated them fairly in setting their child support order. Information on child support orders and payments is drawn from child support administrative records.

Results: In examining factors associated with perceptions of fair treatment, our preliminary findings from multivariate logistic analysis are that Es reported higher levels of fair treatment than Rs. In addition, those who received personalized services (i.e. who knew the name of someone to call with questions), those with lower orders, and those with more hours of service from the agency were more likely to report they were treated fairly. We also examined whether those who reported fair treatment paid more child support in the six months after the follow-up survey, again using OLS analyses, and controlling for factors related to the ability to pay support, willingness to pay support, agency actions, and demographic variables. Our preliminary results suggest that reports of fair treatment are not associated with later child support payments, either overall or within the Es or Rs.

Conclusions and Implications: The voices and perspectives of noncustodial parents are not typically considered in child support policy. This project considers their perspectives and implies child support agencies could take some identifiable steps to improve the experience of noncustodial parents (case management, personalized service, greater staff attention). However, feelings of fairness did not lead to higher payments, suggesting the need for further research.