Missouri Paternity Reform Progresses in State Senate

SB141 - The Missouri Senate Bill that will end paternity and child support fraud in Missouri has passed another hurdle.  A hearing was held on Tuesday, Feb 3 and the “Fiscal Notes” covering the financial impact of the proposed legislation were released.

Of particular interest is that the Attorney Generals office, the Office of State Courts Administrator, and the Department of Health and Senior Services all state that there will be no negative financial impact of SB141.

The Department of Social Services - Family Support Division is reporting an initial estimated cost of over $34000 in State and over $66000 in Federal Funds.  We at MakeTheRealDadPay find these numbers to be very telling in that DSS-FSD states that they will need no increase in staffing to drop cleared cases and then go “Make The Real Dad Pay”.  But at the same time clain a potential loss of over $100,000 in future collections and over $100,000 in FSD payments made to families in cases where they have yet to “Make the Real Dad Pay”.

Upon analysis it would seem that the actual costs should be much lower than the $200,000 total estimate given by DSS-FSD.  since they are estimating that they will have paid over $100,000 where they had not yet “Made the Real Dad Pay” it would only be logical that once they did “Make the Real Dad Pay” that that number would be reduced to $0 and that since they have not yet collected from anyone on these funds that this $100000 isn’t a new cost at all.  But rather an existing cost where they have failed to make anybody pay, let alone the real father.  It’s quite reasonable to infer that although there are real Deadbeat Dads out there that a significant portion of these uncollected funds may be from men who are NOT the real father in the first place.

It also should be ovbious that the $34000 in Child Support enforcement collections (and the Federal contribution of $66000 that is tied to these collections) would also be recovered when DSS-FSD focused on the Real Dad and Making Him Pay.

So the only logical conclusion is that these costs are of a temporary nature only.  That once the initial cases of Paternity Fraud work their way through the new system (if SB141 passes) that DSS-FSD will end up collecting these perceived losses as they begin to Make the Real Dad Pay.  No, we don’t expect that they will collect at a higher rate than the current overall average.  But they arn’t collecting above their own average anyway so there is no gain or loss to from focusing on making the real dad pay.