Child Support debt would be offset first.
According to the IRS' Internal Revenue Manual 21.4.6 (08/31/2018):
The priority of offsets within Treasury Offset Program are:
- Office of Child Support Enforcement
- Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) (payments to the state) and/or
- Non-Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (non-TANF) (payments to the custodial parent through the state)- Federal Agencies
- State Income Tax obligations
- Unemployment Compensation
So if i have a 8000 dlr tax return child support gets the full amount? And not the student loan?
Right. The Treasury Offset Program will offset in the order above, so if you have $10,000 owed for Child Support, and have an $8,000 refund, the whole thing will offset to Child Support.
If I owed child support for a past case for a child who is now 26, and child support to another parent for a minor child who is still underage, would they not send it to the minor child’s parent first? Or will they split it up between the two? My checks are being garnished for both but the minor child’s parent always gets a bigger percentage.
This is not true. My child support debt is twice that of my student loan debt and every year my taxes are garnished and the money goes to the student loan debt. I used to use the garnishment to knock down my child support but once I started school in my later years, every single year the government got their money first. It's been like that since 2011. I found it odd that the government would be "taking food out of the mouths of children," but they do.
Upon my second marriage, I had to file an injured spouse claim with our tax return so that my spouse wasn't responsible for either debt and was able to keep his "portion" of our joint return.
I've looked everywhere for an answer as to why this is the case and I have not received a clear one. It is simply my experience for almost 1.5 decades that Uncle Sam gets their money first, period.