Virginia Calling For Child Support

The State of Virginia has begun to subpoena cell phone records to locate parents delinquent in child support payments.

The state currently has 260,000 delinquent parents and has already received cell phone numbers for 52,000. Now the real work of tracking down those parents and requesting payment begins. The head of the Child Support Enforcement division says he is hoping to expand the program to all 50 states and 160 cell phone providers in the country, particularly now that individual documents don’t have to be sent for each request. Through the program, the state is able to send one file, and the cell phone companies perform a data match and provide the information back to the state.

Statewide in Virginia, non-custodial parents owe a total of $2.3 billion in delinquent child support payments. That number is expected in increase by at least $100 million each year.