Last time, we began discussing how those individuals fortunate enough to land a new job may not realize that while they are busy acclimating to their position, their new employer may be busy submitting their personal information to a state-run child support database.
While this may sound somewhat sinister, we discussed how the reality is that both federal and state law — the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and Georgia Statute 19-11-9.2 — mandates that all employers must run the names of all new hires within ten days.
Having already established the various classes of new hires who must be reported to the database by employers in our previous post, it’s now perhaps logical to learn more about why such a requirement even exists.
According to officials, requiring employers to report new hires to the database helps foster greater stability for families across the state by helping ensure that children receive the financial support to which they are entitled under state law.
To that end, the Georgia new hire database is designed to do the following:
- Facilitate the enforcement of existing child support orders.
- Locate non-custodial parents/putative fathers for the purposes of establishing paternity and, by extension, orders for child support.
It’s important for new hires to understand that this examination of their personal information — name, date of birth, Social Security number, etc. — doesn’t stop here, as once it’s run through the database, it will then be forwarded to something called the National Directory of New Hires. As implied by the name, this is a database accessed by child support agencies across the nation.
If you have any questions or concerns related to child support — establishment, modification, enforcement — please consider speaking with an experienced legal professional who can explain the law, answer your questions and fight on your behalf.
