On June 30, 2006, the second phase of the legislative amendments (Bill 155) came into effect. These changes are contained in section 8 of the Family Responsibility and Support Arrears Enforcement Amendment Act, 2005.
Changes to this legislation will help us continue to improve our services to our clients and increase fairness among support payors and support recipients.
The first change:
The director can exercise discretion to stop enforcement of ongoing support when a recipient fails to respond to a request to confirm or deny that support has ended.
This change is intended to strike a better balance between the interests of support payors and support recipients, and deal fairly with allegations that support has ended.
Some support orders or domestic contracts set out a specific date or an event called a “terminating event” that ends support payments. For a child support order, a terminating event could be the child turning 18, or leaving school and working full time. For a spousal support order, a terminating event could be remarriage or other relevant factors.
When a support payor alleges that support has ended, they must submit a Notice to End Support to the FRO. The FRO will then attempt to contact the support recipient to confirm or deny that support has ended. The support recipient will have 20 days to respond. If they do not respond to the FRO’s request for information, the director may exercise discretion to end support payments.
The second change:
The director can exercise discretion to enforce a lower amount of support when the parties agree that the number of children entitled to support under a Child Support Guidelines order has decreased.
This change will only affect support orders that were made under the Child Support Guidelines. The Child Support Guidelines are a set of rules and tables used to decide how much child support is to be paid. Many orders will mention that they were made under the Child Support Guidelines.
When both parties agree that support for one child has ended, but other children are still entitled to support, the director may exercise discretion to enforce a lower support payment.
It is important to understand that the FRO is not changing the support order, but providing a temporary break from enforcement while the recipient and the payor return to court to have their support order officially changed.
The third change:
Clarification that the FRO does not enforce “overpayment orders”.
An overpayment order is a court order requiring the support recipient to reimburse a support payor for amounts of support received after support should have ended.
An overpayment order is a separate order that is not a support order under the Family Responsibility and Support Arrears Enforcement Act, 1996. The FRO only enforces support orders and domestic contracts filed with the court.
For more information on the above changes, please refer to the following Fact Sheets: