- Contact your Support Enforcement Officer (SEO) to negotiate payments.
- Your SEO may ask you to complete a Resource Statement. Click here for a Resource Statement, DSHS 18-97. Show all of your monthly expenses, periodic bills, and assets on the Resource Statement.
- DCS wants to reach a repayment agreement that you can live with, yet taking your children's needs into consideration.
- Ask your SEO if you can negotiate an escalation clause in your payment agreement. This allows DCS to collect a lesser amount towards back support in the beginning and increase the amount as you pay off some of your outstanding bills.
- Back support payments may depend on how old your support obligation is. You may be asked to sign a Waiver of the Statute of Limitations. This also allows DCS to collect a lesser amount towards back support.
- If you cannot come to a repayment agreement with your SEO, follow the instruction above to request a Conference Board.
Despite recent record improvements in paternity establishment and child support collections, much more needs to be done to ensure that all children born out-of-wedlock have paternity established and that all non-custodial parents provide financial support for their children. Currently, only about one-half of the custodial parents due child support receive full payment. About twenty-five percent receive partial payment and twenty-five percent receive nothing.
In an effort to strengthen and improve state child support enforcement activities, several federal laws were passed, including a national new-hire reporting system. These laws required states to pass uniform interstate child support laws, automate enforcement actions, and provide for tougher noncompliance penalties, such as driver's license revocation.