PATRICIA DIGGS,
Petitioner
v
.
NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES,
Respondent
Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, Inc., by Douglas Stuart
Sea, and Legal Aid of North Carolina, Inc., by Theodore O.
Fillette, for petitioner-appellant-appellee.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney
General Gerald K. Robbins, for respondent-appellant-appellee.
CALABRIA, Judge.
This appeal arises from an order issued by the trial court
reversing a declaratory ruling of the North Carolina Department of
Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) requested by Patricia Diggs
(“petitioner”). Petitioner, a custodial parent of three children
and the former adult caretaker of her niece, Shae Little,
petitioned DHHS on 1 June 2001 for a declaratory ruling pursuant to
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4 alleging the practice of calculating the
debt owed to the State when an adult caretaker accepts payment of
benefits under the Work First Families Assistance (“WFFA”) and
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (“TANF”) programs or its
predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (“AFDC”), wasinvalid. By doing so, petitioner represented she was aggrieved as
defined by the North Carolina Administrative Procedure Act
(“NCAPA”) by the challenged practice. DHHS issued a declaratory
ruling on 30 July 2001 upholding the validity of the challenged
practice. Petitioner sought judicial review of the declaratory
ruling in the Superior Court of Mecklenburg County, and in an
amended order entered 17 December 2001, the Honorable Claude S.
Sitton reversed the ruling of DHHS, finding the challenged practice
violated North Carolina law and was, therefore, void and of no
effect. The trial court limited its order to petitioner's case
only. Petitioner appeals as to the scope of the order. DHHS
cross-appeals as to the merits of the order of the trial court.
DHHS, through the Office of Child Support Enforcement of the
Division of Social Services, is responsible for the operation of
North Carolina's child support enforcement program. North Carolina
provides assistance to families with dependent children who are
deprived of financial support through the WFFA program, operated
pursuant to a federal block grant under the TANF program.
(See footnote 1)
Acceptance of public assistance creates a debt due and owing to the
State in an amount up to the amount of public assistance paid.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 110-135 (2001). When public assistance is paid
out to an adult caretaker, a single account for all unreimbursed
public assistance (“URPA account”) is created by DHHS to measurethe debt due to the State. The adult caretaker receiving public
assistance funds assigns to the State the right to collect child
support from the party responsible for supporting the child or
children benefitted by the public assistance. N.C. Gen. Stat. §
110-137 (2001). Thereafter, child support paid by a responsible
party for such children is retained by the State until this debt is
repaid. Thus, the single URPA account does not differentiate
between the debts created by public assistance grants paid for the
benefit of different individuals or groups where they have the same
adult caretaker. In addition, the account operates without regard
to who is ultimately responsible for reimbursing the State for the
public assistance previously paid. Therefore, DHHS reimburses the
URPA account by retaining child support for any child paid to a
previous recipient of public assistance regardless of whether the
child support retained is intended to benefit the same child as the
previous public assistance.
Petitioner asserts she is a “person aggrieved” within the
meaning of N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 150B-2(6) and 150B-4 and is entitled
to request a declaratory ruling to determine her rights, duties,
and obligations because DHHS combines the debts to the State for
all monthly cash assistance grants ever paid to the same adult
caretaker into a single URPA account. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4 (2001)
(See footnote 2)
, only a “person
aggrieved” may request a declaratory ruling concerning the
applicability of a statute, rule or order of an agency to a given
state of facts. A “person aggrieved” is “any person or group of
persons of common interest directly or indirectly affected
substantially in his or its person, property, or employment by an
administrative decision.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-2(6) (2001)
(emphasis added). “In order for [a] petitioner to prevail on her
claim to status as a 'person aggrieved' under the NCAPA, [a]
petitioner must first demonstrate that her personal, property,
employment or other legal rights have been in some way impaired.”
In re Denial of Request for Full Admin. Hearing, 146 N.C. App. 258,
261, 552 S.E.2d 230, 232, disc. rev. denied, 354 N.C. 573, 558
S.E.2d 867 (2001) (citation omitted).
Petitioner asserts she is a person aggrieved. As a former
public assistance recipient under both the TANF program and the
preceding AFDC program, petitioner argues DHHS' practice of debt
repayment may directly affect her. Specifically, petitioner
contends future child support payments for the care of her childrenmay be usurped to repay the public assistance previously paid
solely for Shae Little.
Petitioner illustrates this contention with two hypothetical
situations involving whether child support paid by the biological
father of petitioner's children, James Stitt (“Stitt”), pursuant to
a court order for the support of their biological children may be
taken by the State for reimbursement of earlier and separate public
assistance grants made solely for the use and benefit of
petitioner's niece, Shae Little. Shae Little no longer lives with
petitioner's family, nor does petitioner receive public assistance.
While petitioner cared for Shae Little, public assistance in the
form of “child-only” grants was paid solely for the needs of Shae
Little.
In her first hypothetical, petitioner argues if she becomes
unemployed and if Stitt ceases to pay child support, petitioner may
need TANF assistance for her children. Petitioner further
hypothesizes if she has no other income at that time and if all
other facts remain as they are presently, she would be eligible for
a TANF grant. Thereafter, if Stitt pays child support in the same
month petitioner receives TANF assistance, petitioner correctly
asserts that, under the current practice, DHHS would keep the
entire amount of the payment made by Stitt until the entire URPA
balance is reduced to zero, meaning part of Stitt's child support
payments would be used to pay the debt created by the previous
State support payments for petitioner's niece, to whom Stitt owes
no obligation of support. In her second hypothetical, petitioner argues if she and her
children receive TANF assistance and if Stitt pays no child support
during that time, petitioner's URPA balance and Stitt's unpaid
child support arrearages will increase. If Stitt's federal tax
refunds are intercepted for purposes of paying child support
arrearages, then petitioner correctly asserts that, under the
current practice, DHHS would retain all of that interception until
the URPA balance is reduced to zero, meaning part of Stitt's
intercepted tax refund would be used to pay the debt created by the
previous State support payments for petitioner's niece, to whom
Stitt owes no obligation of support.
The flaw in these arguments is manifest: petitioner is not
presently aggrieved. At most, petitioner may be aggrieved at some
unspecified point in the future if certain events occur. Nothing
in the record indicates these events are certain to come to pass,
are imminently threatened, or are even likely to occur. At most,
if a number of variables happen in the manner laid out by
petitioner's hypotheticals, then at that point, petitioner will
become aggrieved; however, it is quite clear that petitioner has
not “demonstrate[d] that her . . . legal rights have been in some
way impaired.” In re Denial of Request for Full Admin. Hearing,
146 N.C. App. at 261, 552 S.E.2d at 232. Therefore, petitioner is
not presently a “person aggrieved” and was not entitled to request
a declaratory ruling under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4.
Petitioner asserts, in the alternative, that an issued
declaratory ruling is binding on both the requesting party and theissuing agency unless it is altered or set aside by the courts;
therefore, petitioner would be bound in the future by DHHS'
practice absent judicial review of the ruling. N.C. Gen. Stat. §
150B-4 (2001). In short, petitioner argues because DHHS chose to
issue a declaratory ruling and because a validly issued declaratory
ruling is binding on the requesting party, petitioner became a
“person aggrieved” within the meaning of the NCAPA when DHHS issued
the ruling.
The declaratory ruling in the case sub judice was issued
pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4, which, absent good cause
shown, requires an agency to issue a declaratory ruling when two
prerequisites are satisfied: (1) a request for a declaratory
ruling is made (2) by a person aggrieved. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4
(2001). The validity of any declaratory ruling issued pursuant to
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4 is contingent upon the satisfaction of
those two prerequisites. Because petitioner was not aggrieved at
the time the request was made, the request was ineffective to
trigger the issuance of a declaratory ruling, and the declaratory
ruling has no effect, binding or otherwise, on petitioner from
which an aggrieved status may arise.
In sum, we find it is not necessary to reach the merits or
scope of the declaratory ruling. Petitioner was not aggrieved, as
required by N.C. Gen. Stat. § 150B-4, by the URPA accounting method
at the time the request for a declaratory ruling was made;
therefore, no valid declaratory ruling issued. Accordingly,
petitioner's claim of aggrieved status due to the issuance of avalid and binding declaratory ruling is without merit. The order
of the trial court is set aside. We remand to the trial court with
instructions to remand to and order that the agency vacate the
declaratory ruling.
Vacated and remanded with instructions.
Judges McGEE and HUNTER concur.
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