To receive government assistance in the US is to submit yourself to a whole host of requirements, some reasonable, some harsh. Each state, and each program within it, has their own requirements, which might be a test of income, of assets, or even of behavior. Some are reasonable — a millionaire probably doesn’t need food stamps; others are more punitive. A disabled single man wanting to get Medicaid in Maryland, for instance, has to show he doesn’t have assets totaling over $2,500. To receive unemployment benefits in Texas, quitting a job to take care of a child makes you ineligible, unless that child has a medical illness.

One requirement is especially odious, and little-known and little-studied: In many states, for many aid programs, you must agree to cooperate with authorities on enforcing child support against the parent of your child.

Depending on the state where they live, a single parent may have to agree to help the government recoup child support in order to receive child care assistance, food stamps, cash welfare, or Medicaid. They may have to establish parenthood of their child, provide estimated dates and locations of conception, home or work addresses of the other parent, or even sign away their right to child support payments to the state.

Given that around 80 percent of custodial parents are women, this is a welfare restriction with a disproportionate effect on one gender — and one that explicitly punishes you for being a single parent.

These requirements have rarely been at the forefront of public debates about aid programs, which often focus on work requirements and income thresholds, but their effect is significant. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the cash welfare program created by President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform in 1996, requires child support cooperation universally. About half of states also require it for key aid programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and even child care subsidies. It continues to be a priority for conservative state lawmakers: Iowa recently passed a cooperation requirement to receive Medicaid in the state. Kansas came within a single vote of passing a similar measure for food stamps. Conservative think tanks have been pushing these policies nationwide, arguing that if the government has to help a single parent, it’s only fair that they help extract something from the other parent.

These requirements are more common in conservative states, but are by no means limited to them. They range in severity, but generally require single parents to assist the state to open child support cases against non-custodial parents. In practical terms that might be as simple as providing a father’s name and address.

In other cases, like when the father isn’t known, a parent seeking an exemption from these requirements might be forced to provide intimate details to government aid workers or, in cases involving domestic abuse, justify why they fear for their child’s safety before learning whether they’ll get assistance to buy food or pay for their health care.

Child-support cooperation requirements subject single parents to the state invading their privacy

These restrictions are invasive, and much of their impact on welfare recipients is predictable.

Their first function is to act as yet another “administrative burden” to people receiving benefits. For any government aid program, every additional form that must be filled out, piece of mail that must be answered, or documentation that must be submitted is a step that can be forgotten or failed.

Too often, people who are eligible for assistance fail to receive it for these procedural reasons. Medicaid unwinding — the recent resumption of eligibility verifications that were waived during the Covid-19 pandemic’s huge drop in Medicaid enrollees — has been an example of this problem at an enormous scale. Millions of people are losing Medicaid coverage with the retightened rules, and yet many of them remain eligible for the program. They just aren’t responding to the government’s mailed notices on time, or they haven’t sent in the right forms.

Politico followed two women in Arkansas who both lost Medicaid because they didn’t submit paperwork — and, in both cases, it was related to child support cooperation. There’s no indication these women were unwilling to provide the necessary documentation, but as the bureaucratic requirements stack higher and higher, it becomes difficult to make sure every box is checked. (It also creates more places for the state to fail; in Florida, Spanish speakers have to wait on average 2.5 hours on hold to reach the Medicaid call center.)

They can also act as a deterrent that stops people from seeking help in the first place. One of the difficulties with quantifying the harm of child support requirements is that states rarely measure the cause of a person losing benefits, like the two women from Arkansas. Another is that it’s impossible to know how many people simply decide not to apply because of some combination of fear, despair, or fatigue.

Not surprisingly, there are posts on social media sites like Reddit from women looking for a “state that doesn’t require child support to receive food stamps,” because “my child’s father … is a very angry and hostile guy and I’m just trying to separate myself from him.” A 2005 KFF report described this perverse effect: “[A local caseworker] explained that when younger mothers found out about the cooperation requirement, they usually decided to forgo Medicaid. These mothers often have a bond to the father, she said, and are less likely to have serious medical problems. They choose to go without preventive health care.”

Administrative burdens and deterrent effects are bloodless terms that can mask the cold budgetary motivations for these policies: States can keep their spending down by coming up with hurdles that reduce people taking advantage of the benefits to which they should be entitled.

But child support cooperation requirements also seem to have a third, cruel purpose: to humiliate these parents before the state.

A survey of state employee manuals, testimony before state legislatures, and social media posts makes it hard to avoid that conclusion. One woman explaining her experience in Oklahoma applying for TANF writes on Reddit, “When I said that my baby’s father was now permanently disabled and would not be involved or able to pay child support due to living in a medical facility, they said, ‘We cannot sign you up for these benefits, so if you change your mind, come back and see us.’” The Medicaid caseworker in that KFF study described the pit over which the state dangles people in need: “Older mothers — those in their 30s with diabetes and hypertension — often realize that their precarious health leaves them no choice but to cooperate.”

Nobody claiming a tax write-off, a homeownership deduction, or a tax-preferenced savings account for their child’s college is subjected to the same indignities.

It’s true that for some applicants, these requirements won’t amount to much on top of the already onerous restrictions they face. If you’re already receiving child support, if you don’t mind sharing personal information with agency employees, and if you’re great at keeping track of deadlines and forms, the requirements will be just another box to check. But for many people, the complexity of these applications is extraordinary, and the different requirements for different programs can be daunting. Those using multiple forms of aid at once may face multiple cooperation requirements from multiple agencies.

  • centof@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Politicians in charge of these programs love to pretend they should be the arbitrators of who receives support when in fact support should be distributed as widely and freely as possible to the population. modern politicians are largely bought and paid for to give support mostly to those who don’t need it instead of those who do.

    Politicians are intentionally not well equipped to decide who is deserving of funds as should be evident from their response to financial crises like the 2008 financial crisis.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    See this face? This is my surprised face. No way anyone could have seen stuff like this coming. America has never disparaged people exploited and broken by it’s Capitalist system.

    Remember kids, if the guy on TV calls you a hero then run from whatever you were doing if you can and buckle up if you can’t. That means they have no intention of fulfilling their part of the social contract after they’ve used you up. In this case it’s the media about heroic single parents.

  • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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    or even sign away their right to child support payments to the state.

    Gives a new meaning to “welfare state.”

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Administrative burdens and deterrent effects are bloodless terms that can mask the cold budgetary motivations for these policies: States can keep their spending down by coming up with hurdles that reduce people taking advantage of the benefits to which they should be entitled.

    One woman explaining her experience in Oklahoma applying for TANF writes on Reddit, “When I said that my baby’s father was now permanently disabled and would not be involved or able to pay child support due to living in a medical facility, they said, ‘We cannot sign you up for these benefits, so if you change your mind, come back and see us.’” The Medicaid caseworker in that KFF study described the pit over which the state dangles people in need: “Older mothers — those in their 30s with diabetes and hypertension — often realize that their precarious health leaves them no choice but to cooperate.”

    If you’re already receiving child support, if you don’t mind sharing personal information with agency employees, and if you’re great at keeping track of deadlines and forms, the requirements will be just another box to check.

    An internal document intended for West Virginia state employees gives intricate instructions about how to determine whether to grant a waiver: Was “[t]he child … conceived as the result of incest or forcible rape”?

    If someone in West Virginia does claim a good cause exemption, multiple government workers are responsible for determining the applicant’s credibility, including, somehow, evaluating things like “the intensity and probable duration of the emotional impairment.” If you are a single mother in West Virginia with two children and need to claim a waiver, going through this entire process — revealing past abuse or justifying a fear of future violence, having a slate of state employees assess your credibility about your own perceptions of your family’s safety — ultimately allows you to receive around $542 a month in cash assistance and Medicaid benefits.

    As a country, we’ve operated under a perverse version of the maxim that it’s better to let 10 guilty men go free than one suffer: that it’s better that 10 deserving people receive nothing than a single undeserving one get health care or food.


    The original article contains 2,490 words, the summary contains 365 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • sadreality@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    One requirement is especially odious, and little-known and little-studied: In many states, for many aid programs, you must agree to cooperate with authorities on enforcing child support against the parent of your child.


    How is this an issue… Deadbeats should be fucking paying for their choices.

    Is too much to ask women to keep track of their crotch fruits’ genetic donors?

    Clown thesis IMHO

    • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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      Because the first play the deadbeat’s lawyer is going to make is to sue for custody because every day the deadbeat has custody is a day they don’t have to pay child support for. Because of this many single parents don’t want to go after their deadbeat ex’s money because it will likely bring the deadbeat back into their life and, usually worse, their child’s life. Now the child is probably going to have to spend time with a parent that does not give a shit about them and is only looking after them to save money and the parent that actually loves the child would rather forfeit money than put them through that.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Plenty of reasons why a single woman would be afraid to confront an ex.

      • sadreality@kbin.social
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        Nobody is asking for that, just the information about the father and his finances.

        I am not saying process should not be stream lined and there bad actor politicians but basic premises that the state will step in because a woman decided she does not want father around does not stand on its own.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      Did… did you read the article? People are getting denied because the other parent is completely disabled and cannot provide child payments. Women are being forced to stay in abusive relationships.

      I expect my government to help, not demand payment at the very time I’m in the worst place.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          That’s why news companies cultivate a reputation. I know you’re used to conservative outlets just making shit up but news is supposed to occupy the space between publicly available data and a bad game of telephone.

          If there’s no data (and there isn’t, by design) then news companies are the next best thing. And having been on the wrong side of the “welfare” system I can tell you it’s gatekeeping all the way down. Every little box they can add to trip you up is a win to them.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      In the last part they claim it’s ‘humiliating’ to share personal information with a social worker. They apparently expect to receive benefits without wanting to have the trouble of discussing why they would be eligible?

      And on the main point they don’t want to help the government hold the parent that left their child to dry accountable?

      I get wanting help people in need but this reads like a conservative wrote a caricature

      • sadreality@kbin.social
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        I am starting to think many of these pieces are PsyOps to sow division…

        I support women, their rights and choices but this ain’t what this article about as much as they try to make “pro woman”

        Letting deabeats off the child support is not going to resonate with anyone, no matter what brain dead arguments they use.

        Also, they don’t use any data for this vomit, just anecadoatale examples, which could have been made up for all we know.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          That’s because there is no data. Nobody keeps stats on why people were refused benefits. That would lead to actually fixing the system when the goal is to prevent it’s use.

          • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s coincidental with preventing its abuse

            A large part of the vibe of this piece is that it’s too emotionally taxing for those who are eligible to a) argue their case that they are in fact eligible and b) help the government recover part of the cost from the parent who ditched their child

            If there are purely administrative hurdles that’s another thing, these should be as low as possible. But refusing to share relevant information?

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              Relevant information as determined by who? All of this gating costs so much we could literally stop doing it and cut every American a monthly check for SNAP/TANF/SSDI. (about a thousand dollars)

              This isn’t a financial thing.