define: Wage (Income) Withholding

In Minnesota, a child support or spousal maintenance obligee (recipient) may elect to receive his or her support payments through automatic wage withholding. When wage withholding is set up, the support payments are deducted directly from the support obligor’s (payor’s) pay check. If the obligor is self-employed, that person acts as his or her own employer and must submit the support payment to the State for processing to get paid to the obligee.

Two Forms of Wage Withholding

Income Withholding-Only Services

Income withholding-only services are available for individuals who receive court-ordered child support, spousal maintenance or both. For this service, the obligor pays an additional $15 per month which gets withheld from his or her income in addition to the actual support obligation. To set up income withholding-only services, the obligee must identify the obligor’s employer and send an income withholding notice to that employer. The County does not handle this. The obligor’s employer then withholds the amounts from the obligor’s pay and sends it to Minnesota’s Child Support Payment Center. This support payment is then sent by the Payment Center to the obligee, usually through direct deposit into a bank or a stored value card.

Full Child Support Services

Wage withholding of a support obligation can be implemented through full child support services (IV-D). Spousal maintenance can be included, if there is also a child support obligation. However, if there is no child support obligation, full support services are not available for only spousal maintenance obligations. If you or your children receive public (cash) assistance, there is no cost for this service. If you do not receive such public assistance, the cost is $35 per year for full child support services.

Full child support services include a lot and is usually the much better option for a child support obligee. These services include actually locating the parents to commence a child support action, determining paternity (if needed), establishing a child support order (which includes basic support, childcare support and medical support), modifying the support obligation based on changes in circumstances, implementing cost-of-living adjustments every other year and processing and keeping records of all amounts paid for support.

In addition, and of great importance, this service also includes the enforcement of the support obligation. These enforcement remedies include, but are not limited to, pursuing contempt of court for non-payment of the support obligation (which could land the support obligor in jail), capturing tax refunds to apply towards unpaid support obligations, suspending any licenses owned by the obligor to compel payment of support, and reporting a delinquent support obligor to the credit bureaus, which would have an adverse impact on his or her credit score. All of these measures can, and do have a great impact on compelling individuals to pay their court-ordered support obligations.

Other Options

Some individuals with court-ordered support obligations, opt not to have any wage-withholding, and to instead work it out directly between the two individuals. In these situations, it is best to structure the monthly payments through automatic bill-pay or automatic bank transfers to ensure timely payments. If the support obligor refuses to pay, or consistently pays late, the obligee always has the option to obtain wage withholding as addressed above.

Contact an Attorney

If you are supposed to be receiving child support or spousal maintenance through a court order, and the other person is not paying, contact the attorneys at Blahnik, Prchal and Stoll to assist you.