Raising a child can be as expensive as it is rewarding. Medical insurance, clothing, food, childcare and education are all necessities requiring money that sometimes simply isn?t available. Unfortunately, many families face an even tougher struggle when one parent refuses to pay child support.
A study conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office shows that the amount of unpaid child support increased from $45 billion in 1997 to $89 billion in 2001. In an effort to combat this growing problem, more and more custodial parents are turning to private collection agencies (PCAs) to assist them in recovering delinquent child support payments.
?Parents are turning to PCAs for various reasons,? said Ted Smith, vice president of programs for ACA International, the Association for Credit & Collection Professionals. ?The main reason being the agencies? capabilities to quickly and efficiently collect the child support rightfully owed to parents.?
With thoroughly trained collection professionals handling accounts using the latest technology, child support collection agencies can provide valuable assistance to parents who often face desperate circumstances.
?The majority of child support clientele are single parents trying to support a household on minimum wage,? Smith said. ?Thanks to extensive resources and an unwavering commitment to help these struggling families, PCAs are successfully collecting on even the most difficult accounts from delinquent payers who in the past have been untraceable and haven?t paid in years-if ever.?
Long hours and serious dedication to their clients have led PCAs to recover money on accounts that government agencies didn?t even accept or decided to abandon. In addition, compared to other markets, the child support collection industry has an average commission rate of 9 percent*, according to ACA International. This low commission rate ensures that the majority of the money collected by PCAs goes to the rightful party-the family.
ACA International, formerly known as the American Collectors Association Inc., is the association of credit and collection professionals. Founded in 1939, ACA International has approximately 5,300 members, including third-party collection agencies, attorneys, credit grantors and vendor affiliates. Headquartered in Minneapolis, ACA International serves members in the United States, Canada and 58 other countries worldwide. For more information visit our new Web site at www.acainternational.org.
* – The 9 percent commission rate for child support collection comes from ACA International?s 2001 Top Collection Markets Survey. This information was compiled from a sample of ACA?s third-party agency membership based on their data from the 2000 calendar year. Although a statistical reliability of 95% was achieved for the survey, the information gathered for individual collection market segments varied and may not reflect the actual collection market as a whole.
