Child Support and TANF Cooperation Requirements: Exemptions, Penalties

If your family receives Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal law requires you to help the state pursue child support from the other parent as a condition of keeping your cash benefit. That is the core of the child support cooperation requirements for TANF: you identify the noncustodial parent, help establish paternity if it hasn’t been established, and participate in getting a support order in place. If you refuse without a qualifying reason, your grant is reduced by at least 25 percent, and your state can cut deeper than that.¹

What Cooperation Means in Practice

Federal law, at 42 U.S.C. 654(29), spells out what you’re expected to do. You have to give the child support agency the noncustodial parent’s name and any other information it asks for.² Beyond that, cooperation means:

Attending interviews, hearings, and legal proceedings scheduled by the child support agency or a court to establish paternity or set the support amount.
Submitting yourself and the child to genetic testing when paternity has not been legally established.
Responding to follow-up requests about the other parent’s whereabouts, employment, or finances.

One protection: the agency can offer you a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity but cannot force you to sign one or make signing a condition of eligibility. You keep the right to insist on genetic testing instead.²

What You’ll Be Asked to Share About the Other Parent

The state has to refer your case to the child support agency whenever paternity is unestablished or a support order needs to be created, changed, or enforced.³ Expect to provide the noncustodial parent’s full legal name, Social Security number, and last known address at intake. Employer information matters because it lets the agency set up wage withholding quickly.

Other useful leads include past addresses, mutual contacts, vehicle information, professional licenses, and military service. You are only expected to share what you actually know. But withholding information you do have will be treated as non-cooperation, and missed appointments are the single most common reason families get flagged. If you can’t make a scheduled meeting, call your caseworker before the date. Rescheduling is easy; curing a sanction after the fact is not.

Good Cause Exemptions

Cooperation isn’t safe for everyone, and the law recognizes that. Federal law directs every state to establish good cause and other exceptions to the cooperation requirement, defined with the child’s best interests in mind.² Federal regulation separately recognizes a domestic violence waiver under 45 CFR 260.52.³

States write their own specific criteria, but the widely recognized grounds are situations involving domestic violence, sexual assault, or incest where pursuing support could endanger you or the child. Adoption cases are also commonly covered. If your exemption is granted, the state will not try to locate the other parent or establish an order.

You have to document the claim. States generally accept police reports, protective orders, court records, letters from domestic violence shelters, or sworn statements from medical or mental health professionals. Raise the issue at your intake interview rather than simply refusing to cooperate; a caseworker can walk you through your state’s process and connect you with advocacy resources.

If You’re a Relative Caregiver, Not the Parent

These rules apply to parents. Federal law does not require child support cooperation from people who are not the child’s parents, and the regulation gives states discretion to decide whether to apply cooperation requirements to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other kinship caregivers at all.⁴

Where states do impose cooperation on non-parent caregivers, they can use a different good-faith standard, since a grandmother raising her grandchild rarely has the same information about an absent parent that a former partner would. Federal guidance also asks states to consider whether pursuing support could destabilize the child’s placement. Some states exempt relative caregivers entirely. If this describes you, ask your caseworker directly how your state handles it before assuming the standard rules apply.

What Happens to the Support Money You Get

Accepting TANF changes who receives the support. Under 42 U.S.C. 608(a)(3), you must assign your right to child support over to the state as a condition of getting cash assistance.¹ The state collects payments from the other parent and keeps them as reimbursement for the TANF benefits paid to your family. The assignment is capped at the total amount of TANF your family receives over the entire period on assistance; the state cannot keep more than it paid out.

About half of states have a “pass-through” policy that sends a portion of collected support directly to your family without reducing your TANF grant. Amounts vary widely. Some states pass through $50 a month for one child; others allow $100 to $200 depending on the number of children. A few pass through the full monthly amount.⁵ Ask your caseworker whether your state has a pass-through and what applies to your family.

Distribution After You Leave TANF

Once your family is off assistance, the rules shift in your favor. For former TANF families, states must distribute collections in this priority order:⁶

Current monthly support goes to your family first.
Back support that built up after you left TANF goes to your family.
Back support that accrued before you ever received TANF goes to your family.
Only arrears that accumulated during months you were on TANF go to the state and federal government as reimbursement.

Federal tax refund intercepts follow a different track. Arrears collected through the federal offset go to the state first for reimbursement of assigned debt, with any excess distributed to your family.⁷

Penalty for Not Cooperating

If the child support agency finds you’re not cooperating and you don’t qualify for a good cause exemption, your state must reduce your TANF grant by at least 25 percent.¹ That’s the federal floor. States can cut deeper, and some end the entire family’s cash assistance.³

You should receive notice before a sanction takes effect, and federal law requires states to have a fair hearings process to appeal. The specifics of that process vary by state. You can also cure a sanction by completing whatever step you missed, whether that’s attending the interview, showing up for genetic testing, or turning in requested information. Once the agency verifies your compliance, the benefit reduction is lifted going forward. Lost benefits from the sanction period are rarely restored.

Effect on SNAP and Medicaid

A TANF sanction for child support non-cooperation does not automatically apply to every other program.

Some states impose their own child support cooperation requirement for SNAP. When a parent is found non-cooperative under those rules, the SNAP agency removes that individual from the household’s benefit calculation rather than cutting off the whole family.⁸ The household size drops by one and the sanctioned person’s income is subtracted. Depending on the finances, the remaining household’s allotment can decrease or occasionally increase. Children are not penalized for a parent’s non-cooperation, and back benefits are not paid for the excluded period once you comply.

Medicaid eligibility is generally determined separately. Losing TANF does not automatically end Medicaid coverage, and children in particular retain eligibility based on household income regardless of a parent’s cooperation status. If you’re worried about coverage during a sanction, contact your state Medicaid office directly to confirm your family’s status.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 608 – Prohibitions; Requirements
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 654 – State Plan for Child and Spousal Support
3
eCFR. 45 CFR 264.30 – Procedures to Ensure Cooperation With Child Support
4
Administration for Children and Families. TANF and Child Support Cooperation Requirements (ACF-OCSS-DCL-25-01)
5
National Conference of State Legislatures. Child Support Pass-Through and Disregard Policies for Public Assistance Recipients
6
Administration for Children and Families. Instructions for the Assignment and Distribution of Child Support Under Sections 408(a)(3) and 457 of the Social Security Act
7
Administration for Children and Families. How Does a Federal Tax Refund Offset Work?
8
U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service. Evaluation of Child Support Enforcement Cooperation Requirements in SNAP, Volume I