Senate Passes Child Support Bill to Promote Parenting Time Agreements

On July 27, by a voice vote, the Senate took action to address a long-standing problem in the child support system. Senate Bill 503 PARENTS Act of 2021, sponsored by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) expands the use of federal incentive payments to states to:

develop, implement, and evaluate procedures for establishing a parenting time agreement when establishing an initial or modified child support order or a medical support order (including procedures for carrying out a parenting time agreement made prior to the establishment or modification of any such order).

The goal is to benefit children and better meet the interests of both parents by facilitating appropriate parenting time agreements at the same time that child support orders are issued or modified.

In effect, this bill would put some of the Federal government’s money where its mouth has been for some time. In 2014, Congress adopted a resolution favoring the establishment of parenting time agreements when child support orders are created. The resolution stated that “establishing parenting time arrangements when obtaining child support orders is an important goal which should be accompanied by strong family violence safeguards” but  went on to say that “states should use existing funding sources to support the establishment of parenting time arrangements.” (See “Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act” 128 STAT. 1946.)

For the most part, though, states did not use existing funding to achieve that important goal. What Senate Bill 503 does is to allow Federal incentive money to be used for this purpose.

It’s a good and necessary step in the right direction. It has the potential to nudge states that have not done so to establish parenting time adjustments in their child support guidelines and to streamline the process for fathers to establish parenting time with their children. However, much of the potential benefit depends on how the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) writes the enabling regulations. Should SB 503 be passed by the House and enacted into law, NPO will be monitoring the regulations OCSE establishes to achieve the goal of the bill.