The Twelve Percent
The Orphan Tax, Part II: The government said states must stop taking foster children's Social Security. The contracts say they never intended to.
Project Milk Carton — Investigation | July 23, 2026 | Part II of "The Orphan Tax" series (Part I published July 15, 2026)
Mateo Jaime was fifteen when Alaska started taking his mother's money.
His mother was murdered — by his father. Social Security survivor benefits are, in the most literal sense possible, the last thing a dead parent gives a child: a monthly check earned by the parent's own working life, payable to the child until adulthood. By the time Mateo Jaime aged out of Alaska's foster care system at nineteen, the state had collected more than $20,000 of it. He was never asked. For years, he wasn't even told.
He is not an outlier. He is the system working as designed.
Part I of this series described the mechanism: state child welfare agencies quietly apply to the Social Security Administration to become the "representative payee" for foster children who are orphaned or disabled, then route the children's survivor benefits and Supplemental Security Income into agency accounts to reimburse the state's own foster-care costs. Part I relied largely on what national reporters had already established — at least $165 million taken from foster children in 2018 alone, across at least 36 states and the District of Columbia.
Part II is what we found when we went past the headlines and pulled the documents ourselves: the contracts, the court records, the SEC filings, the federal audit PDFs, and the Social Security Administration's own regulatory filings.
What the documents show is worse than the story so far told, in five specific ways:
The federal government's own number: In 2023, SSA paid roughly $190 million to foster children whose payee was a child welfare agency — and agencies conserved, on average, 12 percent of it. The other 88 percent did not follow the child.
The contracts never stopped. San Francisco signed a new Maximus SSI-screening contract in 2024, three years after the national exposés. Kentucky signed a $2.6 million foster-child SSI screening contract that took effect July 1, 2026 — seven months after the federal government told states to stop. We found no record of a single such contract being canceled anywhere.
The courts have started ruling for the children — but the money doesn't come back. Alaska's Supreme Court held in 2025 that taking benefits without notice violated foster children's due-process rights. It also held the children could not recover a dollar of what was taken.
The states' last legal excuse is dead. The claim that conserving a child's money would disqualify them from SSI collapses on contact with SSA's own rules — and SSA itself rejected that excuse when Maryland made it.
The reform wave is real — and leaky. The federal government now counts 30 states plus D.C. as having "ended or substantially reformed" the practice. That leaves 20 states still taking the money as of this month — and the count itself doesn't survive scrutiny.
This is the record.
I. The federal government's own number: twelve percent
The single most damning statistic in this investigation was published by the Social Security Administration itself, in the Federal Register, on November 1, 2024 — in a joint SSA/HHS "Request for Information" that functioned as a quiet institutional confession:
"In 2023, SSA paid approximately $190 million in Social Security benefits and SSI payments to children in foster care who have a child welfare agency as their payee. In this same year, all 50 States and the District of Columbia conserved some portion of the SSA benefits... ranging from less than one percent to 31 percent. On average, child welfare agencies conserved 12 percent."
Read that carefully. Federal regulations — 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.2045 and 416.645 — require every representative payee to conserve benefit funds not needed for the beneficiary's current and reasonably foreseeable needs. Conservation is not a courtesy. It is the fiduciary duty that comes with the appointment.
Against that duty: an average of 12 cents on the dollar actually saved for the child. In the worst states, less than a penny.
And the state is not even out of pocket for the child's care in the first place. Federal law (42 U.S.C. § 672(a)) already obligates states to cover foster care maintenance, with Title IV-E reimbursing much of the cost — the average IV-E maintenance payment was roughly $1,441 per month per child as of FY2019, more than the child's benefit check in nearly every case. The child's money is not filling a gap. It is padding a ledger.
About 27,000 foster children — roughly 5 percent of all children in care — receive SSA benefits, per the Congressional Research Service; SSA's filing says about half receive Social Security (typically after a parent's death) and about half receive SSI. Internal contractor estimates put the eligible population far higher — which brings us to the contractors.
II. The contracts never stopped
The 2021 Marshall Project/NPR investigation exposed the "revenue maximization" industry: consultants — most prominently Maximus and Public Consulting Group (PCG) — hired by states to screen foster children for benefit eligibility, mine their medical and school records for qualifying disabilities, replace family payees with the state, and convert children into what one Maximus proposal for Maryland called a "revenue generating mechanism."
The natural assumption is that the exposure ended the business. We pulled the procurement records. It didn't.
San Francisco, May 2024. Three years after the exposés, San Francisco's Human Services Agency signed a new contract with Maximus Human Services, Inc. — competitively bid in December 2023 — worth $761,424 through mid-2028, for "SSI SCREENING, SSI/SSA APPLICATION ASSISTANCE, SSI/SSA BENEFIT MAINTENANCE/RETENTION and SSI/SSA DATA MANAGEMENT." The county's own commission memo states, in plain administrative English: "HSA applies the SSI/SSA to placement costs in the majority of situations." The contract requires Maximus to maintain *"an approval rating of no less than 75% of all initial applications and appeals submitted to the SSA." In an average year, per the memo, Maximus screens over 600 of the county's roughly 836 foster children.
Kentucky, July 2026. On July 1, 2026 — seven months after the federal Administration for Children and Families told 39 governors to stop diverting foster children's benefits — Kentucky's Department for Community Based Services commenced contract #2600001326 with Sivic Solutions Group, LLC of Parsippany, New Jersey: $2,633,447 over two years for "Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility determination, screening, and application services... on behalf of children committed to the care and custody of the Cabinet." The predecessor contract, signed one month before the federal letters, was worth $685,003 for eight months. Annualized, Kentucky's spend on screening foster children for capturable benefits roughly quadrupled after the federal government said stop. Both contracts sit in the Kentucky Legislature's own published contract registers.
Iowa, today. The official Iowa HHS referral form — form 470-3361, live on the state website as of this writing — instructs caseworkers: "The Iowa Department of Human Services has selected MAXIMUS to assist in identification of children in DHS custody who have disabilities and may be eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits." Referral triggers include a "deceased or disabled parent," an "IQ 70 or less," and infants "born at a very low birth weight (2 lbs. 10 oz.)." Referrals go to "MAXIMUS SSI Advocacy" at a Des Moines address. On July 22, 2026 — yesterday — Iowa's governor announced the state will begin preserving foster children's survivor benefits in savings and investment accounts. As of today, the Maximus referral pipeline is still up.
The corporate paper trail. Maximus's own SEC filings chart the arc of the business. Its FY1997 10-K described "revenue maximization projects... generally carried out on a contingency fee basis" in more than a dozen states; by FY2000 it claimed 24 states and more than $850 million captured for them, while warning investors the programs "have been the subject of highly controversial media coverage." The term "revenue maximization" disappears from Maximus filings after FY2005. Then, in the company's FY2025 10-K — filed November 20, 2025, three weeks before the federal letters — the line quietly resurfaces in the U.S. Services segment: "Our services also cover eligibility review and enrollment support for social security benefits for disabled adults and children receiving foster care." We downloaded and searched every Maximus 10-K from FY2020 through FY2024: zero mentions of foster care in any of them. The sentence is new. The business never left; the vocabulary did.
The fee structures tell you what's being bought. In Alaska, per documents read in the 2021 NPR investigation, Maximus was paid about $1,600 for every foster child newly approved for benefits, and the state's 2013 hiring proposal set a goal of signing up "at least 50 new foster youth a year," projecting "more than $400,000 a year" in revenue. Maximus's internal documents estimated 15–20 percent of foster youth are benefit-eligible while "probably no more than 10% get signed up" — an eligibility gap marketed as inventory. PCG, for its part, still advertises itself today, on its own SSI-referrals website, as "the largest vendor for foster children's Supplemental Security Income (SSI) representation in the country," filing "several thousand" applications a year.
We searched for any documented cancellation or non-renewal of a Maximus or PCG foster-care SSI contract attributable to the exposés or the federal directives. We found none.
III. The courts: notice, yes. Money back, no.
The legal shield states hide behind is a 2003 Supreme Court case, Washington State Department of Social & Health Services v. Guardianship Estate of Keffeler. Ask a state agency and you'll hear that Keffeler "upheld" the practice. That is not what it did.
Keffeler decided one narrow statutory question: whether a state payee reimbursing itself violates the Social Security Act's anti-attachment provision (42 U.S.C. § 407). The Court said no — self-reimbursement by a lawfully appointed payee isn't "execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process." But in footnote 12, the Court expressly declined to decide whether the practice violates the payee's fiduciary duties, routing those arguments "before the Commissioner... or elsewhere as appropriate." And it never reached the due-process notice question at all.
Twenty-two years later, those open doors are where the practice is losing.
*Alaska: State v. Z.C. (Alaska Supreme Court, March 28, 2025). A class action filed in 2014 by the Northern Justice Project on behalf of foster children whose benefits the state Office of Children's Services took as self-appointed payee. The trial court ruled in 2019 that taking children's money without telling them* violated Alaska's constitutional due-process guarantee; the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed. Foster children, the court held, must be notified — told what a representative payee is, told what it means that the state wants the job, and told they can propose someone else. Chief Justice Susan Carney went further, urging the legislature to join the states banning the practice outright.
Then came the second half of the ruling: disgorgement and restitution are preempted by federal law. The children get notice going forward. They get none of the money back — a practice worth roughly $1.8 million a year to the state. The class members received nominal damages.
*Maryland: In re Ryan W. (2013). Maryland's highest court held a local department of social services may apply a foster child's benefits to current maintenance — but must notify the child, through the child's attorney, at the moment it applies to become payee, and again when benefits arrive. A second post-Keffeler* notice ruling, from a decade before Alaska's, that most states simply ignored.
*San Diego: B.R. and V.R. (filed 2023). Two sisters, eleven and thirteen when the suit was filed. After their father died in 2020, each was owed $861 a month in survivor benefits. San Diego County had itself appointed payee — without notice to the girls, their attorneys, or the dependency judge — and applied roughly $25,000 to "placement costs" despite already receiving federal and state foster-care funding for their care. The suit, brought by the Children's Advocacy Institute with Sheppard Mullin as pro bono counsel, alleges breach of fiduciary duty. Local reporting established the county had collected $3.2 million from foster children between 2015 and 2023* before reversing its policy in 2022. The suit's current docket status could not be verified as of this writing.
The federal watchdog's own audits. SSA's Office of Inspector General has known for over a decade what agency payee ship looks like up closely. Its 2014 California audit projected that unsuitable payees served roughly 359 foster children statewide and that approximately $1 million had been misused for about 180 of them — and found the state wasn't even using SSA's own data system to learn which foster children received benefits. Its 2012 Pennsylvania audit found 130 children with possibly unsuitable payees managing about $707,000 a year. Its 2010 Maryland audit found 352 payees had never been assessed for suitability at all.
And Philadelphia proved that even a ban isn't enough. The city council banned the practice by ordinance in 2022. Local investigative reporting found the city's Department of Human Services still collecting roughly $1.3 million a year from about 380 foster children afterward. A law on the books; a hand still in the jar.
IV. The dead excuse: the $2,000 trap
When cornered, states have one legal-sounding answer for why they spend a disabled child's money instead of saving it: the SSI resource limit. A child with more than $2,000 in countable assets loses SSI eligibility, so — the argument runs — conserving the money would hurt the child. The state has to spend it. On itself.
The excuse fails four separate ways, on the federal government's own paper.
First: half these children were never subject to it. Social Security survivor benefits are social insurance — Title II has no means test and no asset limit. Per SSA's own 2024 filing, about half of foster children with agency payees receive Title II benefits, typically because a parent died. For every one of them — every Mateo Jaime — the $2,000 limit is simply irrelevant. Conserving an orphan's survivor benefits risks nothing.
Second: Congress built the escape hatch in 2014. ABLE accounts (26 U.S.C. § 529A) shelter up to $100,000 from the SSI resource limit. SSA's own payee manual — POMS GN 00603.041 — states outright: "Payees may place benefits into an ABLE account when they determine that it is in the beneficiary's best interests." Every child SSI recipient qualifies by definition (disability onset before 18), and as of January 1, 2026, the ABLE Age Adjustment Act extends eligibility to disability onset before age 46 — sweeping in older and former foster youth as well. The 2026 annual contribution cap of $20,000 comfortably holds a full year of conserved SSI (the 2026 federal rate is $994/month).
Third: ABLE isn't even the only door. SSA's rules exclude dedicated accounts for children's past-due SSI, retroactive payments for nine months, PASS set-asides, TANF-funded individual development accounts, and special needs trusts — the last two named by SSA itself, in its 2024 Request for Information, as vehicles whose funds "do not count toward the SSI resource limit." The RFI then asks state agencies directly whether they use ABLE accounts or special needs trusts to conserve foster children's funds. The federal government is not merely permitting conservation; it is asking states why they aren't doing it.
Fourth: the excuse was tested — and rejected by SSA itself. According to sworn 2026 testimony before the Maryland General Assembly by Mitchell Y. Mirviss — counsel in the Ryan W. case — Maryland's Department of Human Services and Attorney General's office argued that "SSI eligibility would be forfeited if a resource limit was exceeded," and "SSA rejected Maryland's view." Massachusetts has since written the rebuttal into statute: legislation signed July 4, 2025 requires the state's child welfare agency to screen every child and establish ABLE accounts for all eligible children and youth.
What remains of the excuse is administrative homework: an ABLE balance above $100,000 suspends (not terminates) SSI; dedicated-account funds have restricted uses; someone has to actually open the account and manage it. That is not a legal barrier. That is a job description — the job the state accepted when it asked SSA to hand it the child's money.
V. The scorecard — and the twenty states still taking the money
Credit where due: the last eighteen months produced the fastest reform wave in this issue's history.
In December 2025, ACF Assistant Secretary Alex J. Adams — who had ended the practice himself as Idaho's health and welfare director — sent letters to 39 governors. His press statement did not hedge: "Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats." At that point, by the federal count, only 11 states had protective policies.
Seven months later, on July 15, 2026, ACF announced that 30 states plus the District of Columbia have "ended, or substantially reformed" the practice — Oklahoma the 30th. The reform instruments are real and verifiable: Kansas's first-in-the-nation executive order (January 2025, ending a ~$9 million-a-year practice); Missouri's HB 737 (signed July 2025 — screening within 60 days, ABLE accounts and special-needs trusts, annual statements, ending a ~$10.6 million-a-year practice); Nebraska's LB 275 and January 2026 executive order (separate trust accounts, financial-literacy requirements, milestone disbursements); Louisiana's February 2026 executive order declaring benefits "the legal property of the child, not the State"; Mississippi's Foster Youth Earned Benefits Protection for Success Act (2026); California's AB 2906 (2024 — survivor benefits may no longer pay or reimburse the cost of care); Arizona's HB 2559 (2023, ending a ~$6 million-a-year offset); Oregon's SB 556 (2023, the broadest — protecting benefits, inheritances, and even wages).
Now the caveats, because honesty is the point of this series.
Twenty states are not on the federal list — meaning, as of mid-July 2026: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. (Iowa announced a change July 22, after the ACF list was published.)
The list itself is odd. Maryland — the state that pioneered reform with its 2018 age-tiered conservation law (40 percent conserved at ages 14–15, 80 percent at 16–17, 100 percent at 18+) — is not counted by ACF, apparently because its tiered law still allows diversion for younger children. Neither are Connecticut, Illinois, or New York, despite partial reforms. Meanwhile several states on the list appear there on the strength of announcements whose legal instruments we could not verify. The federal scorecard measures commitments; it does not audit them. Nobody currently does.
And the holdout states are documented, not hypothetical. Wisconsin takes roughly $3 million a year in Social Security benefits (plus about $7.6 million a year in child support) from children in its care, by its own agency's figures; the governor's budget fix was stripped out by the legislature's finance committee, and the pending reform bill had not passed as of spring 2026. Pennsylvania county agencies took at least $15.7 million from more than 1,300 children over four years — 44 of 47 counties reviewed collected — and only four counties filed the spending reports SSA requires; reform bill HB 151 sits with 31 bipartisan co-sponsors. Tennessee collected $31.5 million from orphans in its care between 2019 and 2024 — and appears on ACF's reformed list anyway, on the strength of a mid-2026 commitment whose instrument we could not locate.
One more federal number puts the whole fight in proportion. ACF's own estimate of what states take in survivor benefits nationally: about $34 million a year — in the agency's words, "a fraction of one percent of the total child welfare bill." States are strip-mining orphans for rounding-error money.
VI. What one child loses
The average Social Security survivor benefit for a child is approximately $1,138 a month (SSA data, 2025). Four years in care — an ordinary stay for a teenager who enters at 14 and ages out at 18 — is roughly $54,600.
That is a paid-off car, a housing deposit and two years of rent, a debt-free associate degree, or simply a bank account that does not read zero on the morning the state's obligation ends. Now set that against what actually happens to youth who age out with nothing, per the federal government's own longitudinal data and the leading academic study:
27 percent of former foster youth report homelessness by age 21 — 42 percent experienced it at some point by 21 (HHS National Youth in Transition Database, Data Brief #7).
At age 26, former foster youth in the Midwest Study reported median annual earnings of $8,950, versus $27,310 for their peers.
Roughly 15,000 to 18,500 young people age out of American foster care every year.
The named cases put faces on the math. Justin Kasieta (Michigan): $18,000 in survivor benefits taken over three years while he and his four siblings were in care. Malerie Shockley (Alaska): roughly $700 a month in disability benefits taken through her teens; at eighteen she was homeless and pregnant, living in a tent — the precise outcome the money existed to prevent. Kristina Tanner (California): about $1,200 a month taken by Butte County after her father died when she was eleven. Jayden Kiley: not told for eight months that her deceased mother's benefits existed; roughly $8,500 consumed. Alex Carter, the lead plaintiff whose case became Alaska's landmark ruling: SSI taken through her early teens; a court eventually agreed her rights were violated; she recovered nothing.
And one case that shows recovery is possible when someone fights: Zaveonte and Xavier Winn of Philadelphia, who through legal action recovered $9,070 each of their late adoptive mother's withheld survivor benefits. The money can come back. It almost never does, because almost no one is told it was ever there.
VII. What would actually end this
Part I closed with a reform blueprint. Part II's documents sharpen it to five enforceable points — each one already proven workable by some state, which means no state can call any of them impossible:
Screen for family payees first and notify the child through counsel at the moment the agency applies — In re Ryan W. and Alaska's Z.C. have already made this a legal floor in two states; Missouri's 60-day screening statute shows it scales.
Conserve by default, in vehicles that already exist — ABLE accounts (Massachusetts mandates them; Kansas and Missouri name them), special needs trusts, dedicated accounts. The 12-percent conservation average is not a resource problem; it is a choice.
Ban contingency-style and per-approval contractor compensation. A $1,600-per-child bounty and a contractual 75-percent approval quota are incentives to manufacture disability findings on traumatized children. Publish every such contract.
Audit the reform states. ACF's list counts press releases. Philadelphia proved an enacted ban can coexist with $1.3 million a year in continued collection. Someone — SSA, ACF, or state auditors — must reconcile announcements against actual conserved-fund balances, annually, in public.
Give every aging-out youth a full accounting and the balance — and a realistic path to recover what was wrongly taken, because Alaska's ruling shows that without one, even winning in court returns nothing.
The Social Security Administration's June 2026 message to state agencies commends reformers and restates the fiduciary rules. Warm words. But as of this month, the operative facts are these: twenty states still take the money; Kentucky's screening contractor is working under a fresh $2.6 million contract that began after the federal government said stop; Maximus's newest annual report quietly re-added foster-children's benefits to its business description; and the average child under an agency payee still sees twelve cents of every dollar that was legally, entirely, theirs.
The orphan tax has not been repealed. It has been rebranded as reform in thirty states — and left running, on contract, in the rest.
Project Milk Carton is a 501(c)(3) organization focused on child welfare transparency and missing children awareness. This investigation is built exclusively on verifiable public records; every factual claim above is sourced below and claims we could not verify are flagged in the editors' notes.
Editors' Notes — Verification Flags
In keeping with this series' standard, the following items are reported with their limitations stated:
The San Diego suit's current docket status (post-April 2023) could not be verified; filing, parties, counsel, and allegations are multiply sourced.
The identities of the 39 letter-recipient states and the 11-state baseline were never officially enumerated by ACF; the 20-state "still diverting" list is derived from ACF's own published 30-state + DC reform list of July 15, 2026.
Tennessee's appearance on the ACF reform list could not be matched to a verified legal instrument; its 2019–2024 collection figure is from state-level investigative reporting.
The Maryland "SSA rejected Maryland's view" account rests on sworn legislative testimony by Ryan W. counsel (March 2026), a primary but single source.
Iowa's cumulative "$42.9 million" revenue figure (Part I-era reporting) appears in a single document read in the 2021 NPR investigation and is cited only as such; it is not used in this article's totals.
Oklahoma's reform instrument (executive order vs. agency policy) was not specified in the federal announcement.
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Sources
Federal documents
SSA/ACF Joint Request for Information, 89 Fed. Reg. 87453 (Nov. 1, 2024) — $190M/2023, 12% average conservation, resource-limit and ABLE discussion: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-11-01/pdf/2024-25462.pdf
ACF press release, letters to 39 governors (Dec. 11, 2025): https://acf.gov/media/press/2025/states-are-diverting-earned-social-security
ACF press release, "30 States Have Ended the 'Orphan Tax'" (July 15, 2026): https://acf.gov/media/press/2026/30-states-have-ended-orphan-tax-preserving-survivor-benefits-foster-youth
SSA, "A Message to State Child Welfare Agencies" (June 16, 2026): https://www.ssa.gov/news/en/advocates/2026-06-16.html
SSA Resource Hub for Representative Payees for Foster Children: https://www.ssa.gov/payee/fosteryouth.htm
CRS R46975, "Children in Foster Care and Social Security Administration Benefits: FAQ": https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R46975.html
GAO-21-441R, SSA data exchanges with state foster agencies: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-441r
SSA rules (conservation & exclusions)
20 C.F.R. §§ 404.2045, 416.645 (conservation duty); 42 U.S.C. § 1382(a)(3)(B) (resource limit): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1382
POMS SI 01110.003 (resource limits history): https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0501110003
POMS SI 01130.740 (ABLE $100K exclusion; 2026 contribution limit): https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0501130740
POMS GN 00603.041 (payees may use ABLE accounts): https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0200603041
POMS SI 01130.601 / GN 00602.140 (dedicated accounts); SI 01130.600 (9-month exclusion); SI 01130.510 (PASS); SI 01130.678 (IDAs)
26 U.S.C. § 529A and ABLE Age Adjustment Act (Pub. L. 117-328 § 124): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/529A
Contracts & corporate records
San Francisco HSA–Maximus contract memo (May 17, 2024): https://www.sfhsa.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2024-05/viii.f._maximus_ssi_application_screening_and_assistance.pdf
Kentucky PSC registers — Sivic Solutions contracts #2600001326 ($2,633,447, eff. 7/1/2026) and #2600000534: https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/moreinfo/Contracts/2004%20Keifer%20Data%20Base/PSC/260600.pdf ; https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/moreinfo/contracts/2004%20Keifer%20Data%20Base/PSC/251100.pdf
Iowa HHS form 470-3361, "MAXIMUS SSI Advocacy" referral: https://hhs.iowa.gov/media/5082
Maximus 10-Ks (EDGAR): FY1997: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1032220/0000950133-97-004254.txt · FY2000: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1032220/0000912057-00-054860.txt · FY2005: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1032220/000110465905060288/a05-21479_110k.htm · FY2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1032220/000103222025000053/mms-20250930.htm
Maximus Wisconsin $21.2M child-welfare contract press release (2011): https://investor.maximus.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/344/maximus-awarded-21-million-child-welfare-contract-rebid-in
PCG "largest vendor" marketing: https://www.ssireferrals.com/
Maximus current marketing: https://maximus.com/solutions/disability-benefits-and-services
Court records & audits
Washington DSHS v. Guardianship Estate of Keffeler, 537 U.S. 371 (2003): https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/537/371
State of Alaska DHSS v. Z.C., Alaska Supreme Court Nos. S-18249/S-18259 (Mar. 28, 2025): https://law.justia.com/cases/alaska/supreme-court/2025/s-18249.html ; coverage: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2025/04/01/alaska-supreme-court-rules-state-must-notify-foster-youths-before-taking-social-security-payments/
In re Ryan W., 434 Md. 577 (2013): https://caselaw.findlaw.com/md-court-of-appeals/1645190.html
San Diego suit (B.R. & V.R.) coverage: https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/04/social-security-foster-benefits/ ; https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/investigations/san-diego-has-collected-over-3-million-in-social-security-payouts-from-foster-children/509-24dcea25-ff7a-4192-bb78-f5ff2de6e42d
SSA OIG audits: A-13-07-17137 (MD, 2010): https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/summary/17137.pdf · A-13-12-11245 (PA, 2012): https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-13-12-11245.pdf · A-13-13-23029 (CA, 2014): https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/summary/Summary%2023029.pdf
Reporting & testimony
NPR/Marshall Project (Apr. 2021): https://text.npr.org/988806806 ; https://text.npr.org/991503850 ; https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/05/17/these-states-take-money-meant-for-foster-children
Marshall Project, "Where Are Their Benefits?" (July 2022): https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/07/22/decades-after-leaving-foster-care-she-learned-she-was-owed-benefits-where-did-the-money-go
Anchorage Daily News, Alaska youth profiles (2021): https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2021/05/03/these-foster-youths-say-the-state-of-alaska-pocketed-thousands-of-dollars-that-belonged-to-them/
NPR, "orphan tax" (Jan. 2026): https://www.npr.org/2026/01/08/nx-s1-5608066/foster-care-social-security-orphans-hhs
CalMatters, Kristina Tanner / county figures (2022): https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2022/07/foster-care-youth-california/
Spotlight PA / Resolve Philly, Pennsylvania investigation (2025–2026): https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/04/foster-care-social-security-resolve-philly/ ; Philadelphia post-ban collections: https://resolvephilly.org/pjc/philly-still-keeps-the-benefits-of-foster-care-youths-despite-a-2022-law/
Wisconsin figures & pending bills: https://19thnews.org/2026/04/wisconsin-foster-care-child-support-social-security-bill/
Mirviss testimony, Maryland HB 768 (Mar. 6, 2026): https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/cmte_testimony/2026/app/1WZiWdH7zVjIL5gOnbp-PgmMSJ7ck0nyR.pdf
Harfeld (CAI) testimony, Maine LD52 (Mar. 12, 2025): https://legislature.maine.gov/testimony/resources/HHS20250312Harfeld133864457470389029.pdf
Children's Advocacy Institute tracker & "Foster Care or Foster Con?" (Apr. 2024): https://www.sandiego.edu/cai/advocacy/youth-benefits/
Daniel L. Hatcher, The Poverty Industry (NYU Press, 2016): https://nyupress.org/9781479874729/the-poverty-industry/
State reform instruments (selected, verified)
California AB 2906 (2024): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB2906
Missouri HB 737 / DSS bulletin (2025): https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MODSS/bulletins/3f00d5b
Nebraska Gov. Pillen EO (Jan. 27, 2026): https://governor.nebraska.gov/governor-pillen-directs-dhhs-preserve-benefits-eligible-youth-care
Louisiana Gov. Landry EO/proclamation (Feb. 24, 2026): https://gov.louisiana.gov/news/governor-jeff-landry-announces-louisiana-as-one-of-the-first-states-to-take-action-to-strengthen-foster-care-and-protect-foster-benefits
Mississippi HB 1758 (2026): https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2026/pdf/history/HB/HB1758.xml
Iowa preservation announcement (July 22, 2026): https://www.kcrg.com/2026/07/22/governor-announces-change-survivor-benefits-investment-foster-care-youth/
Aging-out outcomes data
HHS/ACF NYTD Data Brief #7: https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/nytd_data_brief_7.pdf
Chapin Hall, Midwest Evaluation — Outcomes at Age 26: https://chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/Midwest-Eval-Outcomes-at-Age-26.pdf
Excellent information. Thank you!
I think the DOJ should prosecute the states that are in violation and levy a fine above the value of the total fees they receive on a daily basis. These fees that are collected as a fine can be given to the children when they age out never coming into contact with the states.