Filing a Child Support Lien or Release in Washington State

If you are a staff person at a child support (Title IV-D) agency and you are interested in filing a child support lien or a release of lien in Washington State, you have come to the right place. Just follow the instructions below:

The Washington State Legislature codified some very strict rules about the format of documents filed with our county auditors. Simply sending the Federal "Notice of Lien" to a Washington auditor will result in a return of your unfiled document.

To help you meet the legal formatting requirements, we are providing you with an Indexing Form.

Complete the Indexing Form, print it, and mail it with the Federal "Notice of Lien" Form, or your own release of lien form, and your filing fee ($5.00 for the first page and $1.00 for every additional page) to the county auditor. If you want a non-certified copy of the filed lien returned to you the charge is $1.00 per page.

Note: The Washington State Legislature has added several surcharges to filing fees, which will increase the amount of money charged to file a lien. See RCW 36.18.010, 36.22.178 and 179, and RCW 43.07.129. You may wish to contact the county auditor of the county in which you wish to file the lien to obtain a quote for the filing fee.

Please read this letter from the Director of the Division of Child Support to the other IV-D agency directors regarding the Washington State lien and levy process.

IMPORTANT: All forms are provided as fillable PDF (Portable Document Format) files. You MUST have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC in order to complete this process. To download Acrobat Reader, go to Adobe.com