Iowa Mother is supposed to receive child support.

Father apparently pays child support.

Iowa collects the child support from Father.

And … deposits it into the wrong mother’s account.

For four years.

Iowa also allegedly adds insult to injury in two distinct ways.

First, it blames the misrouted payments on the Mother’s request to change the bank account into which her support payments are supposed to be deposited, and her failure and her bank’s failure to catch the change error on the supposedly e-mailed confirmations of the change.

But the Mother denies that she ever requested to change deposit accounts. Still, the financial institution did change hands at some point, which could have contributed to the error.

Second, after finally paying Mother the amount of money that was misrouted to another mother, the Iowa sent Mother a letter saying that it had paid her by mistake – and that she would have to give the money she had received back. Iowa has since apologized to Mother for that latest error.

Iowa admits to two other cases besides Mother’s where child support payments were routed to the wrong parties.

Iowa has not recovered the child support payments inadvertently sent to the wrong mother.

Read more in this Des Moines [Iowa] Register article: Glitch sends support pay to wrong person.