In August 2016, President Obama signed the instrument of ratification for the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. This Convention contains numerous groundbreaking provisions that, for the first time on a global scale, will establish uniform, simple, fast, and inexpensive procedures for the processing of international child support cases, which benefits children and those responsible for their care. While similar procedures are already the norm in the United States, establishing them as the international standard represents a considerable advance on prior child support conventions. Ratification of the Convention will mean that more children residing in the United States will receive the financial support they need from their parents, whether their parents reside in the United States or in a foreign country party to the Convention.
This means that there are new tools out there…but they come with a caveat: The OTHER COUNTRY must be a party to the same Convention. There are now 34 countries that have ratified the Convention. [Think Europe, not Latin America, nor south Asia]
We have strong enforcement laws in Texas; IF easy steps are taken in Court to preserve the fact of non payment, the nonpayment of child support often becomes a very high growth “investment” that will be eventually paid– and is only not paid if the payor is penniless both in life and in death.
