Kane County collecting more child support

More than $14 million in child-support payments were collected in 2007 in Kane County, about a $1 million increase from a year earlier, prosecutors said this week.

The state's attorney's child-support division also boasted a 97 percent success rate among the 1,832 hearings it oversaw, according to annual statistics released by the office.

Prosecutors attribute the increase in child-support collections to a growing Kane County, which has seen its court system affected by the increase in population, said Clint Hull, the county's first assistant state's attorney.

"Each year we get busier and busier -- there's more bodies in Kane County," Hull said. "So there's more crime being committed. There's more mothers that need child support collected."

The child-support division is responsible for enforcing child-support orders primarily for Healthcare and Family Services in Illinois.

According to the agency, Kane County has about 11,176 administrative or open court child-support cases and has referred 7,619 cases to prosecutors for enforcement.