The Long Arm of Justice: The Potential for Seizing the Assets of Child Support Obligors* Maureen A. Pirog-Good** and Lydia Amerson This article explores the potential for the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program to expand its asset seizure activities by documenting the size and composition of asset portfolios of fathers who live apart from their children using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experiences-Youth Cohort (NLSY). Further, current CSE asset seizure practices are evaluated in light of the results presented on the asset holdings of nonresidential fathers. The CSE program, enacted in 1975, is state administered with oversight provided by the federal government. State CSE personnel locate nonresidential parents owing child support, establish paternities and child support orders, enforce court orders, and distribute collections. Most state child support collection efforts focus on securing the obligor's income flow rather than his or her stock of accumulated assets. Of the $8.9 billion in child support collected nationwide in 1993, the percentage secured through the liquidation of seized assets is unknown (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993). This number is undoubtedly small some state CSE programs have only recently begun to explore the use of asset seizure to secure past-due child support. The gravity of securing child support is highlighted by the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The law changes welfare as we know by requiring recipients to be working within two years of receiving a welfare check or lose their benefits. In addition to restricting benefits to teenagers and legal immigrants who have lived in the country less than ten years, the new law penalizes recipients if a child's paternity is not established, places tighter restrictions on food stamp eligibility, and also places a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits. Balancing the prospect of reduced public aid, the law also includes provisions for more effective child support enforcement to assist needy families. The number of children who are eligible to receive child support is large and growing: nearly 27% of all children in the U.S. live in a single parent household (U.S. House of Representatives, 1994), and by age 18 about half of all children will have lived in a one-parent household at some point in their lives (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989). However, a 1992 Census study indicates that of the 11.5 million custodial parents, only 5.3 million had active child support orders. Even among those with active child support orders, only half received full payment, one-quarter received partial payment, and the rest received nothing (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995). The new welfare law authorizes states to restrict drivers' licenses of obligors and prioritizes outstanding child support ahead of federal debts. With regard to asset seizure for the collection of child support arrearage, the act improves credit bureau, banking, and financial institution data matches for the identification of noncustodial parents who owe past-due support. The law also improves the ability of child support enforcement officials to place liens and levies on obligors' real and personal property out-of-state. We extend the literature in this policy area in two ways. First, this is the only study of assets owned by fathers who do not live with their children. We focus on noncustodial fathers because 88% of the 17.6 million children who lived in a single parent household in 1992 lived with their mothers (U.S. House of Representatives, 1993, p. 744). The assets of nonresidential fathers who range from 20 to 35 years of age are compared to those of men who live with their children or who are childless. One limitation of this study is that it describes the asset holdings of all nonresidential fathers, yet only some nonresidential fathers are noncompliant obligors. …