2008 Amendments to the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act ...

income withholding, but rather makes the assumption that the employer’s communication to the
employee regarding receipt of the order will cause an employee-obligor to act to prevent a
wrongful invasion of his or her income if it is not owed as current child support or arrears.
Subsection (b) directs an employer of the enacting state to recognize a withholding order
of a sister state, subject to the employee's right to contest the validity of the order or its
enforcement. Prior to the promulgation of UIFSA, agencies in several states adopted a procedure
of sending direct withholding requests to out-of-state employers. A contemporaneous study by
the federal General Accounting Office reported that employers in a second state routinely
recognized withholding orders of sister states despite an apparent lack of statutory authority to do
so. UIFSA marked the first official sanction of this practice. Subsection (b) does not define
“regular on its face,” but the term should be liberally construed, see U.S. v. Morton, 467 U.S. 822
(1984) (“legal process regular on its face”). The rules governing intrastate procedure and
defenses for withholding orders will apply to interstate orders.
Subsection (c) answered employers’ complaints that insufficient direction for action was
given by the original UIFSA. Prior to the 1996 amendments an employer was merely told to
“distribute the funds as directed in the withholding order.” This section clarifies the terms of the
out-of-state order with which the employer must strictly comply. As a general principle, an
employer is directed to comply with the specific terms contained in the order, but there are
exceptions. Moreover, many income-withholding orders received at that time did not provide the
detail necessary for the employer to comply with every directive. Since then, however, the longanticipated
federal forms were promulgated throughout 1997 and 1998, with periodic updates to
the present time. Most recently, the text of income withholding orders for child support is fast
conforming to a nationwide norm. To the extent that an order is silent, the employer is not
required to respond to unstated demands of the issuing tribunal. Formerly, employers often were
so concerned about ambiguous or incomplete orders that they telephoned child support
enforcement agencies in other states to attempt to understand and comply with unstated terms.
Employers should not be expected to become investigators or shoulder the responsibility of
learning the law of 50 states.
Subsection (c)(1) directs that the amount and duration of periodic payments of current
child support must be stated in a sum certain in order to elicit compliance. The amount of current
support and duration of the support obligation are fixed by the controlling order and should be
stated in the withholding order so that the employer is informed of the date on which the
withholding is anticipated to terminate. The “sum certain” requirement is crucial to facilitating
the employer’s compliance. For example, an order for a “percentage of the obligor’s net
income,” does not satisfy this requirement and is not entitled to compliance from an employer
receiving an interstate income-withholding order.
Subsection (c)(2) states the obvious: information necessary for compliance must be
clearly stated. For example, the destination of the payments must correspond to the destination
originally designated or subsequently authorized by the issuing tribunal, such as by the
redirection of payments pursuant to Section 319, supra. Absent such action by the issuing
tribunal, no redirection by any support enforcement agency or other person or entity is
authorized by this section.
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