TANF: What You Need To Know About Its Child Support Services

In return for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, a state is allowed to keep any child support collected. In this article, read and find out more about the TANF’s Child Support Services!

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a public welfare program. It intends to help parents or guardians who cannot provide for the basic needs of a family with children. However, the federal law states that every TANF recipient must have a child support case. Therefore, in return for the TANF benefits a state issues, the state is allowed to keep the payments collected for child support. This is because the child support payments are used to reimburse the costs made for the TANF benefits.

According to an article on the District of Columbia’s Child Support Services Division, when applying for TANF, the recipient also assigns their rights to receive child support to the program’s child support services. This means that a parent or guardian will transfer their rights to receive child support payments to the state in return for the benefits they would receive from TANF.

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How much child support will be collected?

An article on the Indiana Department of Child Services states that the amount of child support a state is assigned to collect should be less than the TANF benefits to be received. In addition, it must also be less than the amount of child support owed to the recipient on that month.

Once the recipient does not receive TANF benefits anymore, the assignment to collect will also discontinue. However, any child support payment not paid, when the TANF benefits were still received, will be collected by the state.

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