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Show Foundation Study Shows Effect Of Lien Law On Utah Welfare Progrom Utah is one of 27 states in which public assistance granted to recipients may be recovered at least in part from their estates after death, according to a research re-search report released today by Utah Foundation. In 1948, nearly 2000 old-age assistance recipients were removed from Utah welfare rolls for refusal to sign the lien agreement, with a saving of $1,040,000 for the year, the Foundation Foun-dation reports. The Utah Public Welfare department de-partment required liens as a precedent to receiving old-age assistance prior to 1937. When the legislature that year barred the taking of liens, old-age assistance assist-ance nearly doubled, increasing from 5,961 in March. 1937 to 11,589 in December of the same year. Mounting costs of public welfare, wel-fare, signified by a request by the Governor made to the special session for additional appropriations appropria-tions for the current biennium of $3,575,000 more than was allowed al-lowed by the 1947 legislature, prompted the re-in statement of the lien requirement in Utah. A preliminary estimate of the Public Welfare department places plac-es the cost of the Utah welfare program at $28,981,496 for the 1950-51 biennium if all present restrictions, including- the lien law are retained and no further increases occur in the cost of living index. If the lien provision provi-sion is repealed, it is estimated that an additional $2,500,000 will be required for assistance payments to old-age recipients, the Utah Foundation report sidles According to the Foundation report, the primary objective of the lien law is not the amount of money that the state will recover re-cover from the estates of recipients recip-ients after their death, although such recoveries do strengthen the state's capacity to provide assistance assist-ance for those who most need it. The principal economy results from the substantial number of individuals who are able to care for themselves or whose relatives assume the responsibility without with-out public assistance in preference prefer-ence to giving a lien upon property prop-erty which they expect to inherit. in-herit. No recovery may -be made until un-til after the death of both the recipient and spouse, and even then, the Welfare Commission may waive recovery if the home is to be occupied by a needy child or other persons dependent depend-ent unon public aid. A cash value of $750 is exempted entirely from recovery, and the amount beyond that claimed by the state is limited to the amount of public pub-lic assistance actually granted since signing of the lien. The welfare laws passed by the recent legislature have materially ma-terially liberalized payments to the more needy old-atfe assistance assist-ance cases remaining unon the welfare rolls, the Utah Foundation Founda-tion report notes. The legislature provided that old-age assistance rcciDients may supplement state aid from private income up to thr amount of their budeetarv nfr' as determined by the Welfare department and also provided that payments b adjusted according ac-cording to cost-of-living changes. The average old-age assistance grant reached a high of $45.74 in March, 1947, prior to the effective ef-fective date of the 1947 legislation. legisla-tion. After declining to an av-I av-I erage of $42.13 in April of that year, payments were ' increased to a $46.72 average in January 1948, and up to $50.78 in November No-vember 1948. Although Utah's per capita income in-come is 26th among the 48 states, average public assistance payments pay-ments to recipients in Utah are among the highest in the nation, the Utah Foundation report notes. For August, 1948, the latest month for which comparable information in-formation for all states is available, avail-able, Utah's average old-age assistance as-sistance payment was $50.68, compared to the national average aver-age of $39.37. Only four states made higher payments, California. Cali-fornia. Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, states which rank 6th, 11th, 14th and 17th in per capita income, respectively. Utah's average payment to aid-to-dependent children cases was $108.03, compared with S66.83 as a national average. The Utah payment was exceeded only by the State of California, 6th high in per capita income. Utah's general assistance average aver-age payment was $56.14, 3rd highest in the nation, exceeded by New York, (2nd high among the states in per capita income) and Washington, (17th in per capita income). Payments for aid to the blind averaged $55.53 in Utah, ranking rank-ing fifth among the 48 states, with Washington, Massachusetts and Arizona making higher payments pay-ments in this category (Arizona's per capita income rank was 34th among the states). In Utah during November, it is reported by the Utah Foundation that a total of 27,001 persons received public assistance, assist-ance, 4 per cent of the estimated population of the state. |