When they stop paying.

Every state runs a child support agency under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. Federal rules require that agency to make its services available to anyone who files an application, and the services it must provide include finding the other parent, establishing parentage, getting a support order set, changing an order, and collecting and enforcing what is owed. You open a case by applying to the child support agency in your state, territory, tribe or county. Families who receive TANF cash assistance, foster care support, and in many places Medicaid or SNAP are referred into the program automatically and do not have to apply. The cost is small by design: federal law caps the application fee at $25, and a state may charge a $35 yearly fee only after it has already collected at least $550 for you in a year and only if you have never received TANF. Many states pay the application fee out of their own funds so the parent pays nothing.

For orders issued or changed in a state since the early 1990s, withholding from pay is meant to start straight away, whether or not anyone is behind. The only exceptions in the federal law are a court finding of good cause not to withhold, or a written agreement between the two parents for a different arrangement. Once an employer is served with the notice, the employer must take the amount stated out of the employee's pay and send it to the state disbursement unit within 7 business days of the pay date, or sooner if state law says so. "Business day" here means a day when state offices are open. An employer who does not withhold is liable to the state for the money it should have withheld, and an employer who fires, refuses to hire, or disciplines someone because of the withholding faces a fine. The notice comes on one nationwide form, the "Income Withholding for Support" order or notice, carrying OMB number 0970-0154.

Support is one of the few debts allowed to reach past the ordinary garnishment limits, but there is still a ceiling, and it is set by the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act. The ceiling is a share of disposable earnings, which is what is left after the deductions the law requires. If the person paying support is also supporting a second spouse or dependent child, the limit is 50 per cent of disposable earnings for that week. If they are not, it is 60 per cent. Each figure rises by five points when the withholding is for arrears older than twelve weeks: 55 per cent and 65 per cent. A state may set a lower limit than the federal one, and the withholding notice tells the employer to apply whichever limit is lower.

The state agency reports the debt to the federal Office of Child Support Services, which passes it to the Treasury, and the Treasury takes the amount owed out of any federal tax refund and pays it to the state. The threshold depends on who is owed. Where the support has been assigned to the state because the family received cash assistance or foster care payments, the debt has to be at least $150. Where the agency is simply providing services to a family that applied, the debt has to be at least $500, and the money has to be owed for a child, or for a child and the parent the child lives with under the same order. The state may add together what the same person owes across several of its cases to reach the figure, but it may not mix the two categories together. Before any of this happens the state, or the federal office on the state's behalf, must send a written advance notice saying the debt is being sent for offset, and that notice must tell the person how to contest it and how to ask for an administrative review. A second notice comes from the Treasury at the moment the refund is actually taken.

This is the enforcement tool that catches people off guard, because it needs no separate court hearing and no travel-related conduct at all. If a state agency certifies to the federal government that someone owes more than $2,500 in child support arrears, the Secretary of State must refuse to issue that person a passport, and may revoke, restrict or limit a passport already issued. The figure is the total arrears, not a monthly amount, and it is checked once: the federal system automatically drops someone off the list when the balance reaches zero, but it does not drop them off automatically when the debt merely falls back under $2,500. Getting the hold lifted runs through the state, not through the passport office. The person contacts the state child support agency where the debt is owed and makes payment or payment arrangements; only the state that certified them can withdraw them, and if more than one state certified them, every one of those states has to withdraw before a passport will issue. The State Department says the removal process can take at least two to three weeks. There is an emergency release route for urgent travel, but the State Department makes the final call on whether to expedite. Someone abroad whose passport is denied or revoked can still get a limited-validity passport for direct return to the United States.

Yes. Every state has to have this power in its law and has to use it in appropriate cases. The federal requirement names three groups of licenses: driving licenses, professional and occupational licenses, and recreational and sporting licenses. It reaches two situations — owing overdue support, and failing to comply with a subpoena or warrant in a parentage or child support case after being given appropriate notice. The federal law sets no dollar threshold and no waiting period; how far behind someone must be, and what notice and hearing they get, is set by each state's own law.

Three more tools sit in the same list of things every state must have. First, liens: a claim against real estate and personal property has to arise by operation of law, without anyone going to court for it, once support is overdue, and other states have to give that lien full faith and credit. Second, credit reporting: the state has to report delinquent parents and the amounts they owe to credit reporting agencies, but only after the person has had all the due process state law gives them, including notice and a reasonable chance to say the figure is wrong. Third, financial institution data match: the state signs agreements with banks and other financial institutions, which then hand over each quarter the names, addresses and taxpayer numbers of account holders the state has identified as owing past-due support, and must freeze or hand over the money in those accounts when served with a notice of lien or levy.

Civil contempt is a court's power to jail someone until they comply with its order. In a support case it rests on the person being able to pay and choosing not to; a court may not punish for civil contempt when it is clearly established that the person cannot comply. In Turner v. Rogers the Supreme Court considered a South Carolina father jailed for twelve months for non-payment, with no lawyer and no finding about whether he could pay. The Court held that the Due Process Clause does not automatically give an indigent person facing jail in a civil contempt proceeding the right to an appointed lawyer, at least where the other parent is also unrepresented — but only if the state instead gives a set of substitute safeguards. The Court also said it was not deciding cases where the arrears are owed to the state rather than to a parent, or unusually complex cases.

The Court listed four. The person must be told that whether they are able to pay is the critical question in the hearing. There must be a form, or something equivalent, that gathers their financial information. There must be a real chance at the hearing to answer questions and statements about their finances. And the judge must make an express finding that the person has the ability to pay. The Court said these were not the only possible alternatives, but that used together they can significantly reduce the risk of someone being wrongly jailed.

There is a federal crime of failing to pay child support, but its edges are narrow. It reaches three situations. First, willfully failing to pay support for a child who lives in another state, where the debt has gone unpaid for more than a year or is more than $5,000 — a misdemeanour on a first offense, punishable by a fine, up to 6 months in prison, or both. Second, crossing state or national borders intending to evade a support obligation that has gone unpaid for more than a year or is over $5,000. Third, willfully failing to pay for a child in another state where the debt has gone unpaid more than 2 years or is more than $10,000. Those last two, and any second or later offense of the first kind, are felonies punishable by a fine, up to 2 years in prison, or both. On conviction the court must order restitution of the whole unpaid amount. The statute also creates a rebuttable presumption that a person who was under a support order could afford to pay it.

Rarely, and the Justice Department says so itself. Its Criminal Division states that child support enforcement is generally handled by state and local authorities rather than the federal government, and that federal jurisdiction is implicated only in very limited circumstances. It describes the 1992 Act that created the offense as aimed at deterring non-payment through prosecution of the most egregious offenders, and the 1998 Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act as creating felony categories for the most egregious violators. If you are worried about a federal prosecution, that is the yardstick: it is reserved for the extreme end, and the ordinary route is state civil enforcement.

The Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, which every state has enacted, gives the state that issued the order continuing, exclusive jurisdiction to change it — usually shortened to CEJ. That state keeps the power to modify for as long as the order is the controlling one and the state is still home to the obligor, the parent owed, or the child. It loses that power in only two ways: all the individual parties file a written consent that another state may take over, or its order stops being the controlling order. Moving away does not by itself move the case, and if everyone has left but the child stayed, the issuing state still has it. A state that no longer has this power can only ask another state's court to act.

Only one order can be in force at a time. If just one court has ever issued a support order for that parent and child, that order controls and everyone must recognize it. If two or more exist, a court with personal jurisdiction over both parents must decide which one controls, following a set order of preference: the order from the only court that would have continuing, exclusive jurisdiction; if more than one court would, the order from the child's current home state; if no order was issued there, the most recent one; and if no court qualifies at all, the deciding court issues a fresh order that then controls. The court making the determination has to state what it relied on, the amount of ongoing support, and the single consolidated arrears figure with interest.

This is the part people get wrong most often. The state child support agency is not a general alimony collection service. Its duty to pursue spousal support is conditional: it applies only where a support obligation has already been established for the spouse or former spouse the child is living with, and only where the child support obligation in the same case is being enforced under the state's IV-D plan. That condition runs through the defined term "overdue support", and "overdue support" is what triggers the agency's liens, license suspensions, credit bureau reporting and bank account matches. So alimony standing alone, with no child support order alongside it, does not open those doors. Federal tax refund interception is the same: the federal definition of "past-due support" covers support for a child, or for a child and the parent the child lives with, and the regulation adds that it must be the same order. Passport denial is narrower still — the statute speaks only of "arrearages of child support". The tools that do reach alimony on its own are the ones that are not part of the IV-D machinery: the wage garnishment ceiling in the Consumer Credit Protection Act is written for "any order for the support of any person", the federal withholding form has its own lines for current and past-due spousal support, and ordinary state court enforcement — contempt, judgments, liens obtained through the court — remains available to a former spouse who goes to court in the usual way.

Only the one that issued it. The uniform act gives the issuing court continuing, exclusive jurisdiction over a spousal support order for as long as the obligation exists, and flatly forbids another state's court from modifying it. That is a stricter rule than the one for child support, where jurisdiction can shift once everybody has left the issuing state. Another state can be asked to enforce an out-of-state alimony order; it cannot rewrite it.

No. Federal law requires every state to treat each support installment, from the day it falls due, as a judgment that cannot be changed retroactively — not by that state and not by any other. This is usually called the Bradley Amendment. There is one narrow opening: a state may allow a change covering the period while a petition to modify is already pending, and then only from the date the other side was given notice of that petition. The practical meaning is blunt. Losing a job, becoming ill, or going to prison does not reduce what has already piled up, and it does not stop the meter while you wait. Support keeps accruing at the ordered amount until a court or the agency changes the order, and the change can only reach forward from the point you asked. Someone whose circumstances change has to go back to court, or ask their child support agency for a review, straight away — not stop paying and explain later.

Either parent can ask for a review. Federal law requires states to review orders being enforced in the program at least every three years on request, and states also allow a request whenever there is a substantial change of circumstances such as losing a job or going to prison. The request goes to the child support agency handling the case, or to the court that issued the order. Ask as early as you can, because the change generally cannot reach back past the date you asked. Separately, arrears already owed to the government, as opposed to arrears owed to the other parent, can sometimes be reduced by agreement: many agencies run debt compromise or arrears management programs.