EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, May 17, 2006

Participants:

The Federal agencies represented were: Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS): Washington, DC, U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Finance Center (NFC), New Orleans, LA, and Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), Cleveland, OH. The following states were represented: AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, HI, IL, KS, LA, MN, MS, MT, NE, NV, NM, NC, OH, OR, PA, SC, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, and WY.

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project teleconference meeting was held on Wednesday, May 17 at 2 p.m., ET. Lovenia Murray of FMS facilitated the meeting and reminded participants to register in advance for each teleconference at FMS's web site at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html. Minutes from the teleconferences are posted at this web site.

Federal agency updates:

Ninety-five of the federal agencies' child support payment payments (deducted from employees' payroll checks) have been converted to EFT/EDI payments. The primary focus now is to convert from checks to EFT/EDI, the benefit agencies' child support payments (withheld from benefit payments), and the remainder of DFAS child support volume from agency migrations, and volunteer allotments.

DFAS restitution/reclamation issue:

DFAS sent a reclamation notice to the MO SDU for seizure of child support overpayments. The MO SDU immediately contacted Loretta Longo, who was able to get the reclamation process halted. Appreciation was expressed to Loretta Longo of DFAS for helping with these reclamations. The reclamation incidents all involve retired Air Force personnel who have died and whose child support was paid before payroll learned of the deaths. Child support payments were sent to the custodial families before the money was seized from the SDUs' bank accounts. Lovenia Murray of FMS reported that the reclamation process was not appropriate for restoration of child support payments; the reclamation process is only appropriate for retrieving overpayments from government benefit programs. Loretta Longo has reported that there is a problem with the retired Air Force's automated system, which is automatically sending out reclamation notices upon the death of any Air Force retiree with a child support order. She is working with the Air Force pay center to correct the problem.

DFAS: DFAS will take over payroll for the following federal agencies: Environmental Protection Agency (5/28/06 - 178 garnishments); Department of Veterans Affairs (VA, employees only) - pilot with Austin, TX field office to begin 8/20/06; second pilot as of 8/18/2007; other field offices beginning 10/21/07 and continuing through April 2008; Broadcast Board of Governors (2/18/07 - 25 garnishments). VA disability payments, including those attached for child support will continue to be sent by the VA, but they will be converted to electronic payments eventually.

SSA: The Social Security Administration (SSA) has implemented its Court Order Garnishment System (COGS) and is testing for electronic payments with IL. New orders (attaching benefit payments for child support) will be the first to be converted to e-payments.

RRB: The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) hopes to begin sending electronic payments for child support (withheld from benefit payments) by September 2006.

California's State Disbursement Unit (SDU) Implementation

Bill Otterbeck of the California Department of Child Support Services gave an update on implementation of California's new state disbursement unit (SDU). All county payments are now being processed at the Sacramento (centralized) location. Los Angeles was the last county to be brought into California's new SDU. Disbursement of all IV-D payments to custodial parents is now being made from Sacramento rather than from the counties.

The CA SDU has processed more than $703 million since November 2005, and less than 1% of payments are undistributed collections. In August 2006, CA will implement version 1.3 of its statewide allocation functionality for IV-D payments. Outreach to employers, non-custodial parents, and custodial parents for redirection of payments will soon begin with a series of mailed notices regarding the upcoming change of address to the Sacramento SDU location. Employers with non IV-D orders have been asked to contact the CA SDU to provide wage assignment information for their non IV-D employees. A new case ID can be assigned to each non IV-D (private) order for payment processing purposes. This is to prevent unidentified payments arriving at the CA SDU. A second set of notices will be sent to employers prior to the redirection of payments in September 2006 informing them of the Sacramento post office box address where child support payments should be redirected and also encouraging electronic payments rather than paper checks.

New application identifier for unemployment insurance payments attached for child support

If your state would like to have a separate application identifier (in the DED Child Support Addendum Segment, which is used in both CCD+ and CTX 820 file formats) for payments from unemployment insurance benefits ("UI" is proposed), please contact Nancy Benner at Nancy.Benner@acf.hhs.gov.

Medical Support Indicator

The DED06 Medical Support Indicator asks whether the employer offers medical insurance to its employees. Employers do not have to indicate whether the employee is enrolled or whether he/she is eligible, just whether the company offers a medical insurance plan. The only valid values are "Y" (Yes) or "N" (No). "W" is only to be used by child support agencies (when sending interstate payments) to indicate that medical support (for example, when a payment that has been seized by the financial institution data match program) is not relevant.

Convert Federal Offset Payments to CCD+?

Currently federal offset payments are sent to state child support offices in the direct deposit (PPD) format. The CCD+ file format would provide case information that is now sent by e-mail to the states. Generally these payments are not going to the SDUs but rather to another state child support office account. States are used to receiving the monies in this way, and it enables them to hold funds several months for "injured spouse claims", so there was not much interest in having these payments converted to the CCD+ format and sent to the SDUs for immediate posting.

Next federal agency/state EFT/EDI teleconference:

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for July 19th, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. ET. States are reminded to register for the teleconference at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html to ensure enough lines are allocated.