Taking care of her 7-year-old son Sebastian — bright, rambunctious and severely physically disabled — required Tyesha Dabney to set aside her career in finance and dedicate herself round-the-clock to his home schooling and care.
Next came a public benefits quandary as she faced mounting bills for his medical treatment and other expenses.
Unable to work as she cared for Sebastian’s complex medical needs, Dabney, 33, needed help paying the bills. She signed up for benefits through D.C.’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and sought child support assistance from Sebastian’s father, a step she had yet to take since their divorce. But the government assistance came with a catch.
D.C., like many jurisdictions across the country, limits the amount of child care support provided by a noncustodial parent that families on TANF can receive to $200 per month — with the D.C. government taking the remainder of the money Sebastian’s father provided under a court order.
The D.C. Council is considering a bill that would get rid of that limit, allowing families on TANF to receive all the child support paid by a noncustodial parent. Dabney took her son to the seat of city government, the John A. Wilson Building, to share their story last week and urge the bill to be passed.
“When money meant to go to Sebastian is taken and given back to the government, it creates an even greater hardship,” she told lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday. “I’m here today because families like mine need that support to remain where it belongs.”
By accepting the cash benefits, families across the country have no choice but to assign their child support case to the government. What results, in many cases, is a system in which parents must sacrifice one source of income for another.
By accepting the temporary cash assistance from the government, families receive peace of mind that money will come in each month at the same time. But, in doing so, they are denied critical child support from the other parent. The system, advocates for eliminating the child support limit say, also discourages noncustodial parents from paying what they owe; once they find out the money will not go to their child, they become less likely to pay.
D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb (D) said his office is proposing the bill to do away with the limit to ease the financial burden on families who struggle to afford necessities in the District. About 4,000 families in the nation’s capital could receive additional child support money each month if the law were to change, according to his office.
“The goal of these reforms and others to come is simple and straightforward: to ensure that to the maximum extent possible, the District government does not withhold child support payments from families and children who need them the most,” Schwalb said at Wednesday’s D.C. Council hearing.
D.C., like most states, once kept all child support that the city collected on behalf of families receiving TANF, using the money to pay for the costs of administering the program.
But in 2006, the city became one of the first jurisdictions in the country to take advantage of a change in federal policy and start allowing TANF families to receive up to $150 per month in child support. If a noncustodial parent paid more than $150, however, the city would keep the excess and split it with the federal government. And if a noncustodial parent went into child support debt and paid late, the government would keep that amount beyond what was owed for that month.
Last spring, the D.C. Council increased the allowable amount to $200.
Dabney said that is still nowhere near enough. Sebastian’s medical care amounts to more than $1,000 per month in out-of-pocket costs alone, not including insurance, she said.
In 2024, she decided to opt out of TANF in hopes of receiving her full child support payment, sacrificing the stability of the government’s monthly payment for the uncertainty of being able to collect more.
The $432 per month she received in TANF benefits, plus the child support payments she was allowed to keep, amounted to significantly less than the child support required from Sebastian’s father. The child support order requires him to pay $732 per month and cover more than 80 percent of medical expenses — but Dabney said she typically receives only the $732, and the payments could stop or decrease if Sebastian’s father loses his job.
“So I had to make the decision — which one do I take?” Dabney said.
Schwalb said Wednesday that he had been speaking with his staff about these reforms to the child support system for more than two years. The system is “unexpectedly complex,” he said — and changing it will require technology upgrades, as well as additional funding from the city to fill the financial gap created by passing along more money to families.
“These reforms will add costs to the District,” said Schwalb. “What we’re trading off is who should hold this money? Should it be the District government or should it be the families of kids who need it?”
After years of collaboration with Legal Aid D.C., which represents both custodial and noncustodial parents in D.C.’s child support system, the attorney general’s office introduced a reform bill in January.
The legislation would phase in changes over several years so that, eventually, all TANF-receiving families would be eligible to receive every dollar of child support paid by a noncustodial parent. The bill would also alleviate what advocates have described as an injustice for noncustodial parents by limiting how long into their child’s adulthood a parent would be held responsible for unpaid child support. Current law says that child support debts expire after 12 years but can be renewed before that expiration, meaning the debts for noncustodial parents can be revived well into a child’s 30s. The new bill would pause the obligations after a child turns 26.
Officials with Schwalb’s office said they hope the policy change will encourage even more parents to pay child support. A pair of studies from the Urban Institute and the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed that once D.C. and Wisconsin changed their policies to allow child support payments to be passed on to families in part, noncustodial parents became more likely to pay child support — because, researchers speculated, some learned that the money would go to help their child and not the government. In Colorado, which implemented a policy that passes 100 percent of child support payments on to families receiving TANF, research drew similar conclusions.
It wasn’t easy for Dabney to testify on Wednesday — or for Sebastian to join her. A tumor he had on his spine as an infant caused him lifelong damage. He needs to be catheterized every two hours to urinate. He can’t feel or move his left foot, which is significantly shorter than the right. He has vomiting episodes — and just the walk from the parking garage to the building was exhausting for him, Dabney said.
But, as his mother testified, Sebastian perked up at the edge of his seat in the Wilson Building hearing room. He clapped when she was finished and told her he would have many follow-up questions to ask her later. He wondered whether the lawmakers in the room were on their side.
Dabney, who has been struggling to find jobs that accommodate Sebastian’s caretaking needs, said she never expected she would need public assistance. But now, she said, she knows “it’s not a luxury.”
“It’s a necessity,” she said. “And it allows Sebastian to live.”
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