The other half of DSS
Most people think of DSS as the foster care agency. It’s also South Carolina’s child support agency.
Under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, DSS runs the state’s child support program. Much of the court work, such as filings, records and payment processing, is handled by the 46 county clerks of court and family courts. DSS pays each county treasurer for that work.
For a parent waiting on a support check, this system is supposed to be dependable. The money is supposed to arrive, and the court’s records are supposed to be accurate.
The other half of DSS
Most people think of DSS as the foster care agency. It’s also South Carolina’s child support agency.
Under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, DSS runs the state’s child support program. Much of the court work, such as filings, records and payment processing, is handled by the 46 county clerks of court and family courts. DSS pays each county treasurer for that work.
For a parent waiting on a support check, this system is supposed to be dependable. The money is supposed to arrive, and the court’s records are supposed to be accurate.
$292.7 million to the counties
From FY2014 through FY2025, DSS paid the 46 county treasurers about $292.7 million, roughly $19 million to $31 million a year.
About $180.6 million of that was cash, mostly federal. About $112.1 million was recorded as “Non-Cash Certified Public Expenditures.” Those aren’t checks DSS wrote. They’re county spending that the counties certified to DSS so DSS could claim federal matching money.
The four largest recipients were:
County Paid, FY2014–FY2025
Charleston $24.0 million
Richland $23.6 million
Greenville $21.5 million
Spartanburg $21.1 million
Smaller counties received less, but the money is steady. Colleton County, for example, received about $3.35 million, and Williamsburg County about $5.65 million. Remember those two counties.
The contracts behind the checks
The agreements are public. In July 2023, DSS signed five-year contracts with each county treasurer, labeled “Title IV-D – Unit Costs” and “Title IV-D Processing.” I found 89 of them, with combined five-year ceilings of about $72.7 million.
The biggest are Richland’s and Spartanburg’s unit-cost contracts at $6,413,500 each, Charleston’s at $5,179,500, and Greenville’s at $5,006,000. None lists a bid, which is normal for an agreement between two governments.
Where the incentive money went
On top of the regular payments, the federal government pays states incentive money based on child support performance. DSS’s own budget filing says those incentive funds go “primarily for providing incentives to County Clerks of Court.”
In some counties, that money went to the clerks themselves.
Colleton County. In May 2025, SLED charged former clerk of court Becky Hill. Investigators said she received $9,880.10 in Title IV-D incentive bonuses. In December 2025 she pleaded guilty to misconduct in office, obstruction and perjury, and was sentenced to probation.
Williamsburg County. In August 2025, a State Grand Jury indicted former clerk Sharon Staggers on charges of embezzling about $119,499. The charges include a $30,000 raise she allegedly gave herself from child support incentive money.
Statewide. The Post and Courier found at least six South Carolina clerks who paid themselves bonuses from these funds, and reported that the state wasn’t checking how counties spent them.
The person who keeps a court’s records holds enormous power over families. When that person is also paying herself from child support funds, families relying on those records deserve to know who’s watching.
The same office that handles your case
Here’s the part that matters most to parents.
In South Carolina, the clerk of court isn’t only part of the child support system. By law, the clerk is also the clerk of the family court. The clerk’s office files and keeps the papers in every case, records the court’s proceedings and signs judgments. When a parent files a motion, it goes to the clerk. When a judge’s
order is entered, court rules say the clerk must send notice of it to every party in the case.
That includes abuse and neglect cases, where DSS is the party on the other side. In those cases, DSS is the plaintiff. The parent is the defendant.
So the office that accepts a parent’s motion, and is responsible for making sure that parent learns what the judge ordered, is also an office DSS pays for child support work. It’s also the office the state’s own budget filing says the federal incentive money is meant to reward..
Billing parents for foster care
There’s another way the child support system reaches families in DSS cases, and it falls hardest on parents who are poor.
When a child is in foster care, DSS can open a child support case against the parents. The child support goes to the state to help repay the cost of foster care. Federal law allows this only “where appropriate.”
In 2022, the federal government said what “appropriate” should mean. Its child welfare policy manual says children in federally funded foster care come from homes poor enough to have qualified for welfare, so their parents “are likely to be living in poverty.” It says charging them child support is “almost never” in a child’s best interest.
It also says taking money from parents “could impede their ability to engage in reunification efforts, potentially extending the time the child spends in foster care.” Federal officials asked states to make not referring parents the default and to pursue support “only in very rare circumstances.”
In other words, it’s supposed to be a last resort.
In South Carolina, it looks closer to standard practice. State law requires every DSS placement plan to set out “the responsibility of the parents or guardian for financial support of the child during the placement.” The plan must also warn parents that failing to pay “may result in termination of parental rights.” DSS’s own brochure tells parents the plan will say “how much child support you have to pay while your child is in foster care.” I couldn’t find a South Carolina policy that adopts the federal default of not referring parents.
That means a parent who’s already paying for therapy, evaluations, drug screens, classes and gas and supervisors for visits can also owe the state support. Falling behind can then be used as grounds to end their parental rights. And the office that processes those payments and keeps those child support records is the same county clerk’s office DSS pays.
One family’s file
From FY2014 through FY2025, DSS paid the Sumter County treasurer about $9.97 million, close to $1 million a year in recent years. Its current five-year child support contracts with DSS have ceilings of about $2.7 million.
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Here’s what K. and D.’s papers show.
Those payments can feel abstract until you watch a family try to get its own court record. I’ve been helping a Sumter County couple I’ll call K. and D. A family court terminated their parental rights in 2025, and the Court of Appeals upheld it in August 2026. D. has asked that court to reconsider. K. is going back to the start of the case.
An order dated before the comments were due
The termination hearing took two days in July 2025. At the end, the judge took the case under advisement. The final order says he “issued a ruling via email” five days later.
On September 10, 2025, at 6:43 p.m., the DSS attorney emailed the proposed order to the other lawyers. He asked for “any corrections or suggested changes by 9:00 a.m. on September 12, 2025,” and wrote, “We will submit for signature by hand after that time.” The signed order is dated September 10, 2025. That’s the same evening the draft went out, two days before the comment deadline. It also wasn’t signed by the judge who heard the case. A different family court judge signed it “for” him. Typed under the signature is one line: “The lawyers consent that the Order reflects [the hearing judge’s] ruling.” The clerk’s office recorded it on September 19.
Earlier, in August 2025, that same second judge signed the orders ending both parents’ child support cases. Those orders cite “the Family Court’s ruling” on their parental rights. No written termination order existed yet.
I don’t know why the judge who heard the testimony didn’t sign the order, or who wrote in that date. Those are fair questions for the court. A judge who never heard a witness signed the order that ended a family’s legal relationship. The family is owed a clear record of how that happened.
The hearing no one can show them
Early in a DSS case there are two different hearings. At the probable cause hearing, a judge decides whether DSS had reason to take the children. At the merits hearing, a judge decides whether abuse or neglect actually happened.
DSS’s own court form calls them the “72 hour probable cause”hearing and the “35 day removal (merits)” hearing.
K. and D.’s daughters were taken on March 31, 2023. The probable cause hearing was held five days later. Both parents were there, and they remember it.
The merits hearing is where the record and the family part ways. One court record shows it was continued three times and never held, while another shows something different.. It lists a merits order dated August 8, 2023, for a hearing on July 13, 2023. That’s 104 days after removal, for a hearing DSS’s form calls a 35-day hearing. K. and D. don’t remember a hearing that day. They believe the merits hearing never happened. DSS says it did. A transcript would settle it. When the family asked for one, they were told no that hearing couldn’t be found.
Transcripts are typed by state court reporters, whom the Office of Court Administration schedules and supervises. But the clerk keeps the docket, and the docket is what tells everyone, including an appeals court, which hearings happened and which orders exist.
The records don’t always agree with one another, either. In its list of what should go into the appeal record, DSS described the termination order as “dated October 1, 2025.” The signed order says September 10.
Fighting a mother for her own file
After her court-appointed lawyer was relieved in late 2025, K. had to represent herself. In 2026 she filed two motions: one asking the court to order DSS to turn over the discovery in her case, and one asking the court to unseal her court records.
DSS asked the court to deny both. DSS argued that the discovery had already been given to her former lawyer, so a new copy would be “unreasonably duplicative and cumulative.” It said there was no pending trial, so there was nothing to prepare for. It called her request “overbroad, burdensome, and vague.”
Her former lawyer says he gave her everything he received, and it wasn’t much. When she went to the county DSS director, she was told the director can’t override the agency’s attorney.
The sealing isn’t the problem by itself. South Carolina law says termination of parental rights records “must be sealed and opened only upon order of the judge for good cause shown.” But that law also leaves a way in: a parent asks a judge. K. asked. The agency on the other side of her case asked the judge to say no. The clerk’s office, meanwhile, told her the record was sealed and refused her copies, even of motions she had filed herself. It also refused to file one of her motions at all.
DSS also asked the court to restrict what K. can say about her case.
What the firewall looks like up close
I haven’t found evidence that Sumter’s clerk treated this case differently because of DSS money. But this is what the firewall question looks like for an actual family. They have an order dated before the comments on it were due, signed by a judge who didn’t hear the case. They have a merits hearing they don’t remember and no transcript to show it. And when a mother asked for her own file, the agency that took her children asked the court to keep it from her.
The contact that says “CONVERSION, INCOMPLETE”
While reviewing these contracts, I noticed something on the contract pages themselves.
Many county treasurer contracts list the vendor’s only contact as “CONVERSION, INCOMPLETE.” The phone number is 803-896-0001, which is the help desk for the state’s own financial system. The email address starts with “migration.”
So I checked every DSS contract page I’d collected. Of 306 DSS contract pages, 80 had this placeholder. Those 80 contracts carry combined ceilings of about $63.2 million.
Seventy-three of them are county treasurer child support contracts, out of the 86 treasurer contracts I could load. The other seven are with The Bair Foundation, South Carolina Mentor and Cumberland Hospital, worth about $1.15 million together.
I want to be careful here, because it’s easy to read too much into this.
A few counties that don’t match
Most counties have two contracts: one for unit costs and one for processing. Five counties show only one in the numbered range I reviewed: Georgetown, Pickens, Oconee, Lee and McCormick. Newberry and Bamberg each show an extra one.
There may be simple explanations, such as a contract numbered outside the range I searched, or a combined agreement. But those are exactly the kinds of details DSS should be able to clear up quickly.
What I’m asking for in this part
-Publish how each county spends its Title IV-D and incentive money, every year.
-Name the person or office at DSS responsible for reviewing that spending.
-Complete the vendor records on the county treasurer contracts, so each contract names a real contact.
-Explain the counties whose contract records don’t match the usual pattern.
-Give every parent in a DSS case a certified copy of their own docket and filings, and log when each motion is sent to a judge.
-Put a clear firewall in writing: explain what separates a clerk’s child support funding from the clerk’s handling of DSS abuse and neglect cases, and tell parents how to raise a concern.
Next time (Saturday, October 31)
In the final part, I’ll follow the money to the people who are supposed to be independent of DSS: the guardians ad litem who speak for children in court. DSS’s own brochure says “A GAL does not work for DSS.” Yet DSS paid one county CASA program about $11.5 million. I’ll also look at a $450,000 Department of Mental Health contract whose vendor, “Department of Social Services,” sits at a housing office in Waterbury, Connecticut, and at the nearly $1 million DSS spent washing cars.
Editor’s note: The South Carolina Department of Social Services was asked for comment on October 27, 2026. Any response will be added to this article and to later installments.
References
- S.C. Comptroller General, Monthly State Spending Transparency Files, FY2014–FY2025: https://cg.sc.gov/fiscal-transparency/monthly-state-spending-transparency-files
- SCEIS Contract Search (county treasurer contracts, including 4400032051, 4400032071, 4400032088 and 4400032090): https://apps.sceis.sc.gov/SCContractWeb/contractSearch.do
- DSS FY2026 Other Funds Survey: https://admin.sc.gov/sites/admin/files/Documents/Budget/L040%20FY26%20Other%20Funds%20Survey.pdf
- SLED, charges against former Colleton County clerk of court: https://www.sled.sc.gov/about/updates/sled-charges-former-colleton-county-clerk-court-perjury-obstructing-justice-and-misconduct-office
- USA Today, Becky Hill guilty plea (Dec. 9, 2025): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/12/09/becky-hill-court-clerk-alex-murdaugh-trial-guilty/87679193007/
- ABC News 4, Sharon Staggers indictment: https://abcnews4.com/news/local/former-williamsburg-co-official-indicted-
- over-alleged-embezzling-of-child-support-funds-wciv-abc-news-4-charleston-sc-south-carolina-state-grand-jury-sharon-staggers-attorney-general-alan-wilson-public-corruption
- Post and Courier, Williamsburg clerk’s $30,000 raise: https://www.postandcourier.com/uncovered/south-carolina-clerk-gives-herself-30-000-raise-drawing-sled-investigation/article_91cbfcfe-9bc7-11ec-a7bd-a3278405d056.html
- Post and Courier, clerks and child support bonuses: https://www.postandcourier.com/beaufort-county/news/south-carolina-clerks-child-support/article_650c1f27-ad80-4e75-9355-d7d6c7d62c2c.html
- Post and Courier, “SC doesn’t check”: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/sc-clerk-court-bonus-child-support/article_a1e579de-01bf-11ef-a765-57aa25ab75c0.html
- S.C. Attorney General opinion (Nov. 7, 2023): https://www.scag.gov/media/rjxfkmmu/03434428.pdf
- SCEIS Help (help desk 803-896-0001): https://sceis.sc.gov/page.aspx?id=218
- S.C. Code of Laws, Title 14, Chapter 17 (clerk of court; §§ 14-17-20, 14-17-260, 14-17-510): https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t14c017.php
- S.C. Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 77(d), notice of orders or judgments: https://www.sccourts.org/resources/judicial-community/court-rules/civil/rule-77/
- S.C. Rules of Family Court, Rule 2(a), civil rules apply in family court: https://www.sccourts.org/resources/judicial-community/court-rules/family/rule-2/
- S.C. Code of Laws § 63-7-2600 (confidentiality of termination of parental rights records): https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t63c007.php
- S.C. Judicial Branch, Office of Court Administration (scheduling and supervising court reporters): https://www.sccourts.org/about/office-of-court-administration/court-administration/
- S.C. Judicial Branch, How to obtain a transcript: https://www.sccourts.org/courts/court-officials/court-reporters/obtain-a-transcript/
- Final Order, Termination of Parental Rights, Sumter County Family Court (signed Sept. 10, 2025; recorded Sept. 19, 2025). Sealed record; copy held by the family and reviewed with their permission.
- Email from the DSS managing attorney, Third Judicial Circuit, to counsel, circulating the proposed order, Sept. 10, 2025, 6:43 p.m. Copy held by the family.
- Motions and Orders for Dismissal, Sumter County Family Court, both parents’ child support cases (signed Aug. 13, 2025). Copies held by the family.
Sources
- S.C. Comptroller General, Monthly State Spending Transparency Files, FY2014–FY2025 (Other)
- https://cg.sc.gov/fiscal-transparency/monthly-state-spending-transparency-files (Other)
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