Why we built a tool that audits
child support agencies.

Nobody independently verifies whether the amount on your child support order is right. Nobody audits whether the agency enforced the order the court actually signed — or a different number. Nobody checks whether the income they used to calculate your obligation is your actual income, or a number they made up based on what they think you could earn.

That's the gap CS Audit was built to fill.

What we found when we looked at the data

We didn't start with an opinion. We started with federal data — published reports from the Congressional Research Service, enforcement statistics from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, academic research from the Urban Institute, and the actual text of federal regulations.

Here's what we found:

• 70% of child support arrears are owed by parents earning less than $10,000 per year. These aren't people hiding money offshore. They're people who don't have it. (Urban Institute, 2007 — still the most comprehensive study available)
• 440,000+ incarcerated parents have active child support obligations. Their debt accumulates while they're locked up — and the Bradley Amendment (42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9)(C)) prohibits retroactive reduction of arrears, even for incarceration.
• Child support can garnish up to 65% of disposable income. Every other type of debt in America — credit cards, medical bills, tax liens — is capped at 25%. (15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(2))
• Of $608 million collected on behalf of TANF families in FY2024, only $101 million actually reached those families. The rest reimbursed the state and federal government. (CRS Report RS22380)
• States receive $532 million in federal incentive payments per year — bonuses tied to collection rates, not to accuracy, not to fairness, and not to child outcomes. (42 U.S.C. § 658a)

These aren't fringe statistics. They come from the government's own reports. The system is well-documented. It's just not well-audited.

A federal law most people don't know exists

In 2016, the federal government published what's known as the "Final Rule" — 45 C.F.R. § 302.56. It's a binding regulation that sets minimum standards every state must follow when calculating child support. It requires states to:

• Base orders on actual earnings and income — not assumptions
• Include a low-income adjustment so support doesn't leave parents unable to survive
• Consider specific personal circumstances before imputing income — including health, criminal record, job skills, education, local job market, and whether employers are willing to hire you
• Never treat incarceration as voluntary unemployment when setting or modifying orders
• Produce orders based on specific, documented numeric criteria — not subjective judgment

This regulation has been in effect for nearly a decade. It's federal law. Every state IV-D agency is required to follow it. But most people going through the child support system have never heard of it — and the agencies aren't in a hurry to tell them.

We put the full text of the regulation on our site, verbatim from the eCFR, with plain-language explanations — because we believe you shouldn't need a law degree to understand the rules that govern your case.

This isn't a "deadbeat dad" problem

The framing around child support in America is broken. The default narrative is that one parent is a villain and the other is a victim. The reality is messier.

Parents who pay deal with imputed income set higher than their actual earnings, arrears that accumulate during job loss or incarceration, garnishment rates that can take the majority of their paycheck, and license suspensions that make it harder to earn the money the system demands.

Parents who receive deal with orders that go unenforced, collection delays through state disbursement units, fees deducted from money owed to them, and — if they received public assistance — a system that sends most of the "child support collected on their behalf" to reimburse the government instead of supporting their kids.

CS Audit doesn't take sides between parents. It audits the agency. It checks whether the calculations match the guidelines, whether enforcement is applied consistently, and whether the records are accurate. When the system works properly, both parents benefit — and so do the children the system claims to protect.

Why nobody built this before

Child support is a politically untouchable subject. Nobody campaigns on fixing it. Nobody wants to be seen as "against child support." So the system operates with almost no consumer-facing oversight.

The parents affected are overwhelmingly low-income. They don't have lobbyists. They can't afford attorneys in many cases. They navigate a system designed by bureaucrats, enforced by agencies with financial incentives to collect more, and adjudicated by courts that are already overloaded.

Building a tool for this audience isn't a business school case study. The market is people who are broke, stressed, and often in crisis. That's exactly why we built it — because nobody else was going to.

We set the price at $9/month — or as low as $1/month if you're on state aid — because cost should never be the reason someone can't document what's happening in their case.

What CS Audit actually does

CS Audit is a record-keeping and audit tool. You connect your email, upload your court order, log your work search and caseworker communications, and the system cross-references everything against published state guidelines and federal regulations.

When there's a gap between what the court ordered and what the agency enforced, CS Audit flags it. When the income calculation doesn't match your actual earnings, CS Audit catches it. When the agency skips a required step, CS Audit documents it.

The output is a structured audit report — fact-based, sourced, and formatted for review by you and your attorney. It doesn't tell you what to do. It tells you what the numbers are and where they don't add up.

We operate as a Specialty Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681a(f)), which means you have federally protected rights over your data and reports. We don't report on the other parent. We don't provide legal advice. We audit agency records against published rules — that's it.

What we believe