Child Support Savings Accounts: An Innovative Approach to Child Support Enforcement

Abstract

The national child support epidemic needs a long-term, progressive solution to reinvigorate nonpaying non-custodians, and this Article proposes a Child Support Savings Account as one solution. In this Article, I urge state governments, in coordination with financial institutions, to offer an account into which non-custodial parents deposit child support payments and from which custodial parents, through the use of a debit card, gain immediate access to the funds. I likewise urge the federal government to offer a federal tax benefit for non-custodial parents who elect to use a Child Support Savings Account, a concept that already exists in the Internal Revenue Code for health and dependent care accounts. A tax-free account to care for a child of a broken home is a natural derivative, and contemporary social policy demands it.