The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is nearing completion of the conversion to an electronic child support payment system, as required by a new law.

"As this conversion continues, more and more Ohio parents are receiving their support payments quickly, securely and conveniently," said Joe Pilat, deputy director, ODJFS Office of Child Support. "The new system also benefits taxpayers with an estimated savings of over $2 million a year through reduced postage and administration costs."

Direct Deposit has been available to Ohio parents for several years. In 2004, ODJFS introduced the e-QuickPay Debit MasterCard program. The electronic disbursement of payments either through Direct Deposit or e-QuickPay, was made mandatory in 2005 within legislation that enacted the state budget. The first counties to convert were Clermont, Fairfield, Franklin, Greene, Holmes and Richland, in December.

The conversion is continuing in phases, each phase representing about 30,000 parents who are currently receiving paper checks. To date, 11 counties have been converted; 12 additional counties will be converted by the end of May.

Parents are being notified in writing of the new requirements and given 28 days to make a choice between payment options. If a parent does not choose a method of disbursement, by default that parent will be enrolled in e-QuickPay. Participants in Cuyahoga County who have not enrolled in either disbursement option will begin to be converted to e-QuickPay starting May 5. Mandatory enrollment begins for the next phase of participants on May 30, with additional phases occurring in time.

The final Phase is expected to begin mandatory enrollment around July 5 and the full state conversion should be completed by the end of July.

A conversion timetable may be found online at: http://jfs.ohio.gov/ocomm/schedule.pdf

As of April 28, there were 244,310 active e-QuickPay cases and 261,767 active Direct Deposit cases.

Ohio collected nearly $2 billion in child support in state fiscal year 2005. There are more than 1 million child support cases in the state. Ohio has the third largest child support caseload in the nation, but ranks second in total payments and first in payments to non-public assistance cases.

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