Seven years after becoming a signatory state to the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, Congress passed and the President signed into law implementing legislation which will gives the treaty the procedural rules to operate. The purpose of the treaty is to provide a relatively uniform and consistent process among the signatory states for enforcement of foreign support orders.

The U.S. still has yet to ratify the treaty, though Secretary of State John Kerry points out in the linked press release that the Senate has already given its advice and consent for ratification. Once ratified, the U.S. will need to create an administrative entity to handle the enforcement of the foreign orders. Since the states already have well-established domestic relations units, I would think the main role of any Federal entity would be to simply act as the gateway into the system of registering the Order with the state or local domestic relations unit where the payor resides and utilize the state’s enforcement mechanisms to obtain the support.

We have several expatriate or naturalized citizen clients. Some of their concerns stem from whether their former spouse will reside back in their home country and make the enforcement of things like custody or child support difficult, if not impossible. This treaty, which will hopefully expand beyond the European Union, Ukraine, and some Scandinavian countries, can be an effective tool for ensuring that a parent cannot abandon their financial obligations to their children just by leaving the country.