Legal Definitions - personal liberty

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT (PRWORA)

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) is a significant federal law passed in 1996 that fundamentally reformed the United States welfare system. Often referred to as the Welfare Reform Act, its primary goals were to reduce welfare dependency by promoting work and personal responsibility, and to strengthen child support enforcement. Key changes included replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), imposing time limits on welfare benefits, and requiring states to implement more robust methods for collecting child support, such as placing liens on assets and facilitating income withholding.

Here are some examples illustrating the impact of the PRWORA:

• Example 1: After losing her job, Maria applied for financial assistance for herself and her two children. Under the old system, she might have received ongoing support through AFDC. However, because of PRWORA, she was enrolled in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which required her to participate in work-related activities and imposed a five-year lifetime limit on receiving federal benefits. This illustrates PRWORA's shift from open-ended entitlement to time-limited assistance focused on encouraging recipients to find employment.

• Example 2: David consistently failed to pay child support for his daughter. Under the provisions of PRWORA, the state child support agency was able to place a lien on his car, meaning he could not sell it without first paying his outstanding child support. Additionally, the agency facilitated an automatic deduction of child support payments directly from his paycheck. This demonstrates PRWORA's enhanced mechanisms for child support enforcement, making it easier for states to collect payments from non-custodial parents.

• Example 3: A state government, aiming to secure its full share of federal funding for child support programs, invested in new initiatives to help establish paternity for children born outside of marriage. These initiatives included offering free DNA testing and streamlining the legal process for fathers to acknowledge paternity. This action directly reflects PRWORA's requirement that states implement improved paternity establishment services as a condition for receiving federal child support funds, thereby ensuring more children have legally recognized fathers responsible for their financial support.