Monday, July 22, 2013

Collecting Child Support Internationally?

On June 18, 2013, the House passed H.R. 1896, International Child Support Recovery Improvement Act of 2013. This Bill, in part, amends the Social Security Act, to allow the United States to comply with the Hague Convention for the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. This bill will allow child support to be collected when one parent and the child(ren) live in one country and the other parent lives in a different country as long as both countries are members of the Hague Convention.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1896ih/pdf/BILLS-113hr1896ih.pdf

The next step to ratify the bill is for the Senate to adopt and enact similar legislation for this treaty. The Department of Health and Human Services is already working on moving the legislation forward.

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/css/resource/july-2013-child-support-report

This should make collecting child support easier because, if passed, the custodial parent may be able to receive some assistance and take advantage of some of the collection resources provided by the non-custodial parent’s country of residence in order to collect child support from the non-custodial parent.

2 comments:

VanRiperandNies said...

What's the update on the bill?

Karen Cynn said...

On June 19, 2013, it was received in the Senate then referred to the Committee on Finance. I don't think that there have been any updates since then.
Currently, the United States has signed the Treaty (and was the first country to sign it), so there are reciprocal agreements with the 15 other countries who are also signatories. The United States is still waiting to ratify the treaty.

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