Parents Who Are Ordered to Pay Child Support

The child support system serves nearly 16 million children who live apart from at least one of their parents. MDRC designs and studies reforms designed to change the way the system responds to both parents, including parents who have been ordered to pay child support but cannot afford to pay what they owe.

The Latest
Report

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrated procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This report compares the benefits and costs of PJAC services with those of business-as-usual child support enforcement.

Brief

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt project integrated procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. After the study ended, the agencies could determine how they wished to continue to use procedural justice principles. This brief describes how they did so.