With too many parents condemned to poverty because of burdensome child support payments, Minnesota has overhauled the rules for how those payments are calculated.
Starting next week, the minimum per-child payment for noncustodial parents will drop and the calculated payments will be lower if the custodial parent has a higher income, among other changes.
"We want people to be successful, and we want people to meet the expectation that's being set for them," said Shaneen Moore, deputy assistant commissioner at the Department of Human Services (DHS). Its child support unit and county offices serve about 220,000 children in Minnesota and collected and distributed more than $550 million in payments in 2021.
The updates are a result of legislation passed in 2021 aimed at substantially easing the financial strain of child support on low-income parents. Those revisions were suggested in a 2019 report by a task force that included DHS officials, attorneys, parents who have received child support and legislators from both political parties.
Rahya Geisler, the grants program coordinator for the state Office of Traffic Safety, wanted to serve on the task force after observing the disparities in the sums her children's fathers were expected to pay despite her own secure financial footing.
Courts set child support based on the state's formula. DHS enforces those orders and provides caseworkers for parents.
"I had an overall positive experience. But some people have this insurmountable debt that's hanging," she said. "Then maybe we should dial it back, make it so they can make their payments."
Geisler recalls meeting with case workers charged with keeping track of parents who owed back support. Several of them said their clients, mostly fathers, had considered taking jobs that paid them under the table in order to lower their monthly payments.
