CENTRALIZED CHILD-SUPPORT SYSTEM IS LOGICAL

A new Missouri law that requires child-support payments be made to one place in the state for distribution to custodial parents should help streamline the child-support system and make it easier for businesses that deduct payments for employees who are under child-support orders.

Currently, payments are made to the circuit clerk of the county in which the marriage was dissolved. The clerks' offices are then responsible for sending the payments to the custodial parent or in the case of welfare recipients, to the state.

With 114 counties in Missouri and marriage-dissolution decrees being granted in virtually every one of them, making child-support payments has become quite a bookkeeping chore for mid-size and large employers responsible for withholding the payments from employees' paychecks and sending them to the appropriate circuit clerk.

Few parents make child-support payments directly to their ex-spouses, so those whose wages are not being withheld by their employer must also send payments to the circuit clerk of the county in which they were ordered to make payments.

Under the new law, all child-support payments will be made to a centralized, Family Support Payment Center in Jefferson City.

Keeping track of child support is a major undertaking, so major that in Cape Girardeau County alone there are three people who work in the child-support section of the circuit clerk's office. The office receives and disburses payments in 7,500 cases. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, it handled some $6.5 million in child-support payments. But even with the centralized collection system, the office will have plenty to do since the circuit clerk's office in each county still records the child-support orders issued in their jurisdiction.

Transferring the handling of payments to one office will be a major undertaking. The state Division of Child Support Enforcement won't run the center directly but will hire a contractor to operate it.

The change is necessary to meet federal law. The federal government pays about $65 million of the $100 million cost of operating Missouri's Division of Child Support Enforcement.

The centralization has worked well in many other states that have already implemented it. There is no reason it shouldn't help make the child-support system in Missouri more efficient for everyone concerned.