The Cook County Child Support System: Current Procedures
II. The Cook County Child Support System: Current Procedures
A. Gathering Information from Parents
In Illinois, IDPA Family Support Specialists conduct an intake interview with the custodial parent. At this stage, IDPA sets up the child support case record, seeking information about the father's identification, location, and income. If parentage must be established and the mother is able to provide adequate information to IDPA, the mother signs a complaint at the intake interview. Once a complaint is signed, the case is referred to the SAO. The SAO does not participate in the intake process.
B. Locating the Absent Parent/Service of Process
IDPA relies upon computer data maintained by various federal and state agencies to locate absent parents and to obtain information regarding an absent parent's income. The tools are more extensive than those usually available to private litigants in parentage cases. While access to these computer tools should result in a more efficient process for establishing parentage and child support obligations by IDPA, this has not seemed to work in practice.
IDPA contracts with the Cook County Sheriff's Office for service of process. This contract is independent of the contract between IDPA and the SAO for the provision of legal services.
C. Establishing Parentage and Child Support
Until recently in Cook County, actions to establish paternity were exclusively heard in the Municipal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Since 1993, however, Cook County has used an expedited process in which administrative hearing officers conduct hearings and enter recommended orders. If the parties agree to the recommended order, it is signed by a judge. If the parties do not agree to the recommended order, the judge will hear and decide the matter.
The hearing procedure begins with service of process on the putative father. Once the respondent has been served, if he appears in court, he will be asked (after the court advises him of his rights) whether he is the child's father. If he admits paternity, an order declaring him to be the legal father is entered.
If the respondent denies paternity, or states that he does not know if he is the father, the hearing officer will order blood tests. If the blood tests exclude the respondent as the father, the ASA routinely asks that the case be dismissed. If the blood tests indicate that the respondent may be the father, an order establishing paternity will be entered if the putative father admits paternity or is found at trial to be the father.
If the respondent fails to appear in court after he has been served, the court may, by default, establish paternity and assign him a support obligation. Most judges give the putative father at least two chances to appear before entering a default judgment.
After a court order establishes paternity, the hearing officer or judge will normally proceed immediately to establish child support. Frequently, if the father admits paternity on the first court appearance, the court will enter a temporary child-support order and the case will be continued for a permanent support hearing. The ASA may subpoena the father's work records and conduct other discovery to determine his income. Support is usually ordered on the basis of a percentage of the father's net income, based on guidelines provided in state law. The minimum guideline for support of one child is 20% of net income; for two children, 25%; for three children, 32%; for four children, 40%; for five children, 45%; for six or more children, 50%.
At the time a child support order is entered, the court must also issue an income- withholding order. The income-withholding order is a separate court order that can be served on any payor of income to the father (usually, an employer), which directs the payor to withhold the amount of support from the father's income and pay it directly to the Clerk of the Court for the child's account. By the terms of its contract with IDPA, the SAO does not serve income- withholding orders on employers, but sends them directly to IDPA. IDPA usually takes about two months to process a withholding order, although some individuals claim that the time period is much longer.
D. Enforcing Child Support Orders
When a non-custodial parent under a child support order is delinquent in paying support and is working for an employer on whom an income-withholding order can be served, no further court action is necessary to collect either current support or the delinquency. If the income-withholding order states that it can be served immediately, the order can be served on the obligor's employer at any time. To collect the delinquency, the obligor can be mailed a notice of delinquency. The obligor can file a petition to stay service of the notice of delinquency and income-withholding order only if he alleges in the petition that the amount stated in the notice is wrong or that he is not the obligor. If a petition is not filed within twenty days after service of the notice, the notice of delinquency can be certified by the Clerk of the Court and sent to the non-custodial parent's employer, who is instructed to withhold both current support and an additional amount equal to 20% of the current support obligation until the amount stated in the notice of delinquency is paid in full.
IDPA seldom uses the notice-of-delinquency procedure described above. Instead, IDPA refers cases involving delinquent obligors to the SAO for contempt proceedings, even if there is an employer on whom an income withholding order could be served.
In addition, mothers, usually non-AFDC recipients, sometimes file pro se motions to enforce support orders; filing pro se typically results in an earlier court date than if the complaint were handled through IDPA. On rare occasions, mothers may go to the Community Relations Division of the SAO for assistance in enforcing a support order. Community Relations occasionally initiates an enforcement action. If the initial child support order was part of a divorce decree, or if the divorce decree reserved the issue of support, the case is assigned to a post-decree unit, which is a separate subdivision within the SAO. If the support order was part of a parentage case or was entered by another state, the case is handled by ASAs assigned to courtrooms hearing post-judgment parentage enforcement and interstate cases only. These cases are handled by a separate subdivision within the SAO.
E. Modification of Child Support Orders
Illinois law allows child support orders to be modified at any time until the child reaches eighteen years of age. In order to modify an award, the moving party must persuade the court that circumstances have changed substantially since the last support order was entered. "Circumstances" usually means the father's income level, the child's needs, or both. Since October 1993, federal law requires IDPA to review all child support orders of Title IV-D participants every three years to determine if a modification is warranted based on the income of the non-custodial parent and, if a modification is warranted, to seek modification. Federal law includes a requirement that the IV-D agency seek downward modifications as well as upward modifications as the facts warrant.