The Hague Maintenance Convention and Foreign Support Orders
A support order stops at the border unless something carries it across. The Maintenance Convention supplies free administrative machinery for child support: an application goes to a Central Authority, which passes it to the other country's agency.
The rule in short
The Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance establishes Central Authorities in each party state and a set of applications a parent may make through them: recognition and enforcement of an existing decision, enforcement of a decision made locally, establishment of a decision where none exists, and modification. Free legal assistance is required for most child support applications, and the deciding authority may not review the merits.
Child support is easy to order and hard to collect once a parent lives in another country. The Maintenance Convention exists to close that gap with administrative machinery rather than litigation. A parent files an application with the Central Authority in their own country, which sends it to the Central Authority in the other, which puts it in front of the body that can act.
What the Convention actually provides
Three things. It requires each party to designate a Central Authority and to give it specific duties: transmitting and receiving applications, helping locate the debtor, obtaining information about income and assets, encouraging voluntary payment, and facilitating collection and transfer of payments. It sets out the applications a parent may make. And it fixes when a decision from one country must be recognized in another.
What it does not do is create a substantive support formula. How much is owed remains a question for the law of whichever authority makes the decision. The Convention moves cases and orders; it does not set the numbers.
The applications available
A creditor, meaning the parent or agency owed support, may apply for recognition and enforcement of a decision already made in another country, or for enforcement of a decision made or already recognized in the country addressed. Where no decision exists, an application may be made to establish one, including the establishment of parentage where that is necessary.
Applications to modify an existing decision are available in both directions, and a debtor who already has a decision against him may apply for modification as well. The choice among these matters, because each starts a different process in the receiving country and each is decided by a different set of rules.
| Application | What the receiving country does | When it is the right choice | Free legal assistance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recognition and enforcement | Gives an existing foreign decision local force and collects on it | An order exists and the debtor is abroad | Required for most child support claims |
| Enforcement of a local decision | Collects on a decision it made or already recognized | The order is already effective where the debtor lives | Required for most child support claims |
| Establishment of a decision | Makes a support order, deciding parentage if needed | No order exists anywhere | Required for most child support claims |
| Modification | Changes an existing decision, if it has power to | Circumstances have changed materially | Not guaranteed on the same terms |
When a foreign decision must be recognized
Recognition is not automatic on the strength of the order alone. The decision has to rest on one of the listed connections between the case and the country that made it. The main ones are that the respondent was habitually resident there, that the respondent submitted to the jurisdiction, that the creditor was habitually resident there, or that the child was habitually resident there when the proceedings began.
A written agreement between the parties choosing a forum counts as well, except in disputes about support for a child. That exclusion is deliberate: a child's entitlement is not treated as something the adults can bargain into an inconvenient forum.
Parents sometimes file a private action abroad and only later discover the Convention route, having incurred costs the free assistance obligation would have covered. The administrative route is slower in some countries and faster in others, but it is nearly always cheaper, and it gives access to income and asset information a private litigant cannot obtain. Where speed genuinely matters, both can run in parallel, so long as the receiving authority is told.
Refusal grounds, and the bar on reviewing the merits
Recognition may be refused where it would be manifestly incompatible with public policy, where the decision was obtained by fraud in connection with a matter of procedure, where a proceeding between the same parties on the same subject is pending in the country addressed, where the decision is incompatible with another decision entitled to recognition, or where the respondent did not receive proper notice and an opportunity to be heard.
Beyond that list the authority addressed may not review the merits. The list resembles the one in commercial cases described in defenses to recognition of a foreign judgment, and the reasoning is the same: a defense that reopened the calculation would leave nothing of the recognition obligation.
How the machinery runs inside the United States
Support enforcement is administered by state agencies, and the substantive interstate rules come from the uniform interstate family support act. That act is a uniform act adopted state by state, and federal law conditions funding on each state enacting the version that carries the Convention provisions, which is why the enacted text is unusually consistent across the country.
A foreign order is registered with the state tribunal much as an order from another state is, and the contest procedure resembles the one in registering and enforcing an order from another state. Once registered, collection uses the ordinary tools described in enforcing a judgment once it is recognized: income withholding, liens, license suspension and account levies.
Two neighboring problems come up constantly in the same files. Getting papers to a parent abroad is governed by serving process abroad under the Service Convention. And where custody and support are being litigated together, the custody side follows the analysis in enforcing a custody order from another country, which uses a different framework and can produce a different answer about which forum decides.
Points to carry away
- Applications travel between Central Authorities rather than directly between courts.
- Free legal assistance is required for most child support applications by a creditor.
- Recognition depends on the decision resting on one of the listed jurisdictional bases.
- The authority addressed may not review the merits of the foreign decision.
- Enforcement itself is governed by the law of the country where it is sought.
- Inside the United States the machinery runs through state support agencies.
Questions readers ask
Does a parent need to hire a lawyer abroad?
Usually not for child support. The Convention requires the state addressed to provide free legal assistance for most applications by a creditor concerning maintenance owed to a person under twenty-one arising from a parent-child relationship, subject to a limited child-centered means test in some cases. That obligation is what makes the route usable for parents who could never fund foreign litigation. Applications for spousal support alone, and applications by debtors, do not carry the same guarantee and may require the applicant to pay.
Can the amount be changed once the order is recognized?
Modification is possible but it is jurisdictionally sensitive. The Convention includes applications for modification of a decision made in the state addressed and of a decision made elsewhere, and the uniform support act adopted by the states carries strict rules about which tribunal may modify a foreign order. In broad terms, the country that made the order keeps the power to change it while a party or the child remains connected to it. A parent who obtains a modification from a tribunal without that power gets an order nobody will enforce.
What happens to arrears that built up before the application?
Recognition ordinarily reaches accrued arrears as well as future payments, because the decision being recognized includes what it has already produced. The practical limits come from the enforcing country's own law: its limitation periods for enforcing a judgment debt, its rules on interest, and the collection tools available. Currency is handled at conversion, and a parent should expect the enforcing agency to convert at its own prescribed rate rather than the rate on the day each payment fell due.
Sources
- HCCH — Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, full textThe applications available, the bases for recognition, refusal grounds and free legal assistance.
- HCCH — Child Support Convention, status tableThe states for which the Convention is in force, which decides whether the route exists.
- HCCH — Child Support SectionCountry profiles, forms and the practical handbook for case workers and applicants.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute — 42 U.S.C. 659a, International Support EnforcementDeclaration of foreign reciprocating countries and the standards such a country must meet.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute — 42 U.S.C. 666, Requirement of Statutorily Prescribed ProceduresThe condition that states adopt the uniform interstate family support act as enacted.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute — 28 U.S.C. 1738B, Full Faith and Credit for Child Support OrdersWhich tribunal keeps continuing exclusive jurisdiction over a support order and who may modify it.
Liberty Law Library is a publication, not a law firm. This article states general rules and cites its sources; it is not advice about any particular case, and the law differs by state and changes over time.
More in International Family Law
The Return Petition and What the Applicant Must Prove
Under Article 3 of the Abduction Convention and 22 U.S.C. 9003, a petitioner seeking return must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the child was habitually resident in the requesting country, that the petitioner held rights of custody under that country's law, that those rights were actually being exercised, and that the removal or retention breached them. The court decides location, not custody.
Mirror Orders and Undertakings Before a Child Travels
Where one parent asks to take a child abroad, courts commonly condition permission on protective devices: an order in the destination country mirroring the home order, undertakings given to the home court, a bond or other security, and passport conditions. Undertakings depend on the goodwill of a court that may never see them. A mirror order exists as an enforceable order in the place it will need to work, which is why courts prefer it.
The One-Year Period and the Settlement Defense
Article 12 requires a court to order the return of a child forthwith where proceedings are commenced within one year of the wrongful removal or retention. Where more than a year has passed, return is still required unless the respondent proves by a preponderance that the child is now settled in the new environment. The Supreme Court held in Lozano that the period is not subject to equitable tolling, so concealment does not stop the clock, though it bears on settlement.