The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, popularly known as "welfare reform," mandated several enhancements to the child support program in the area of interstate case processing. Among these are State registries of support orders and "new hire" employment information; a national registry of support orders, and a national registry of "new hires." For more information on these and other enhancements, including the Financial Institution Data Match, see Administration for Children and Families (ACF) (Link opens in new window)
Each state has a Central Registry which functions as the point of contact between the states. The originating state is responsible for following up with the responding state to ensure appropriate action is being taken on the order it has registered in the responding state. State Child Support Enforcement (CSE) offices are required to respond to requests for interstate enforcement services from other State CSE offices within specific time frames and to use proven enforcement techniques, such as automatic wage withholding, which will apply across State lines. Federal regulations on provision of services in interstate cases are found on Current Regulations and Current Proposed Regulations (Link opens in new window).
Federal Regional Offices
Our ten federal regional offices are available to try to facilitate the cases. If the states involved aren't in the same region, the regional offices concerned will work together to try to facilitate the case between the states in each region's area of coverage.
More information can be found at the US Dept. of Health & Human Services regional offices (Link opens in new window).