States have the opportunity to contract with the State of Rhode Island and join a network of child support agencies to intercept the disbursement of the personal injury or workers compensation settlements to delinquent non-custodial parents (NCP) to satisfy their child support debts.

The Child Support Division of MAXIMUS is the vendor supporting the Child Support Lien Network (CSLN) www.childsupportliens.com. The State of Rhode Island hosts CSLN services, and states contract directly with it through interagency agreements.

CSLN is a network of child support agencies that uses its pooled database of delinquent obligors to match against the various records of the personal injury and worker’s compensation claims filed within the insurance industry.

CSLN matches delinquent obligors by utilizing claim data collected by the insurance industry to determine if a person who owes child support is also seeking a personal injury or worker’s compensation settlement from an insurance company. The match rate of delinquent obligors to claims is historically is about 3% annually, with about 70% of the matches leading to arrears collections averaging $3,500 per case. Once a match occurs, a lien or withholding order is attached to the insurance settlement to prevent any disbursement of funds to the claimant from the personal injury or worker’s compensation settlement until the child support debt is satisfied.

The collection potential is over $1 billion annually for child support agencies across the country.

Over one-third of the states currently participate in CSLN, experiencing cost-effective ratios from this program often ten times or more than the national average cost-effectiveness ratio from any other arrears collection resource.

MAXIMUS conducts CSLN outreach to the insurance industry to encourage greater insurer participation and ensures that each member state has its own unique website reflecting its laws and procedures for notices, liens and levies.

• Provides information about non-custodial parents seeking personal-injury insurance settlements.
• Leads to liens (automatic or manual) on a potential settlement after a verified match.
• Allows for levying according to the specific laws of the state seeking the collection.
• Results annually in about $105,000 in past due child support collected for every 1000 cases submitted (about 2.5% of the cases will have settlements averaging $3,500 each).
• Provides excellent locate information since non-custodial parents seeking settlements generally give accurate address information to insurers.
• Voluntary participation by the insurers serves as a bridge between the insurance industry and the state child support programs to avoid further state mandates.