P.E.I.'s AG wants new guidelines for enforcing support payments

P.E.I.'sauditor general wants better enforcement guidelines for child and spousal support.

In her report, Jane MacAdam wrote that the processes to administer, record and enforce orders by the court for spousal and child support(also know as maintenance orders) were inadequate.

The audit covered the time period from April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015.

In that time there were approximately 1,960 cases withalmost $11 million in arrearsthat's about 70 percent of the case files andclose to $7 millionin support payments werecollected and disbursed.

MacAdam reported that staff did not have enough specific guidance on how to properly enforce non-payment.

There were some guidelines written,but they had not been updated since 2007.

The lack of guidance has resulted in inconsistencies in enforcing arrears, she said.

MacAdam calledfor some kind of list of procedures to rectify that.

The report also pointed to inconsistencies in enforcement procedures.

Officers are allowed to use their own judgment to decide what form of enforcement they will take,such as cancelling driver's licenses or bank garnishments.

MacAdam wrote that some officers either do not use certain types or use them rarely.

She said that resulted in certain officers having a a better chance of collecting arrears than others.

Little documentation in some cases

MacAdam was also concerned with the documentation available to support key decisions,such as whether to proceed with certain enforcement activity, or changes to payment amounts.

In some examples that her department studied, they found a lack of documentation of the enforcement activityfor a period of six months or more.

In many of the cases there wereno payments and no documentation providing a reason for the non-payment.

When MacAdam spoke with the officers,they said that they often rely on the beneficiaries to notify them when there are issues with payments.

The report also raised concerns over the review of case files.

MacAdam wrote that when officers were required to make adjustments to a beneficiary's ledger,there was no review or sign-off of the calculations, andshe found several adjustments that were incorrectly calculated.

There was also no review of key decisions that were made in managing case files.

The report has been sent to the Department of Justice and Public Safety, and a written response was requested.