SANTA FE – In a significant move to support families, the New Mexico Health Care Authority (HCA) announced today that they have eliminated program fees for child support services. This policy change aims to encourage more parents and guardians raising children in separate households to apply to the program through the Child Support Services Division (CSSD).
“This policy change is an important step to eliminate a barrier that lower-income parents have been facing in accessing essential child support services,” said Kari Armijo, Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Health Care Authority. “By removing these fees, we can help children who are currently not receiving the financial and medical support they deserve to grow up happy and healthy.”
During the 2024 Legislative Session, the Child Support Program received sufficient funding to eliminate fees previously collected from cases not associated with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or Medicaid programs, which were already receiving free child support services.
National studies indicate that lower-income parents without a child support order often have never been married, are people of color, and/or have only one child.
“We would like to reach as many eligible New Mexicans as possible and help them apply for our services so we can begin the process of establishing parentage, establishing or modifying a child support financial and medical support order for the child’s well-being,” said Betina Gonzales McCracken, CSSD Director. “These were services that came with fees, totaling up to $1,000 but are no longer part of our application process.”
National data also found the top two reasons lower-income custodial parents give for not having a child support order are the other parent can’t afford to pay, or the other parent is providing what they can.
To address these issues, the Child Support program has made several changes over the past four years to establish right-sized court orders. These include:
- Ensuring the other parent has the ability to pay.
- Using the parents’ actual income.
- Reducing retroactive arrears (the “look-back period”) to three years from twelve.
- Implementing a self-support reserve to ensure the paying parent can support themselves.
- Assisting parents with job development and job opportunities through the STEPUp! program, a partnership with the NM Department of Workforce Solutions.
- Changing to a Family First distribution of collections in January 2023, which resulted in 98% of child support collections going to families.
“All of these changes were developed to assist existing child support customers and encourage those parents who do not have a child support court order, who have a child support court order but need help enforcing or modifying it, or are making their own agreements which are not legally binding, to apply for our services for the benefit of their children’s future,” added McCracken.
Applying for child support services is now available online through the YES.NM.GOV site. Applications are also available on the HCA website, or you can request an application be sent to you by calling the HCA consolidated customer service center at 1-800-283-4465 Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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