Colorado § 14-5-507 - Administrative enforcement of orders.

§ 14-5-507. Administrative enforcement of orders.

(a) A party or support enforcement agency seeking to enforce a support order or an income-withholding order, or both, issued in another state or a foreign support order may send the documents required for registering the order to a support enforcement agency of this state.

(b) Upon receipt of the documents, the support enforcement agency, without initially seeking to register the order, shall consider and, if appropriate, use any administrative procedure authorized by the law of this state to enforce a support order or an income-withholding order, or both. If the obligor does not contest administrative enforcement, the order need not be registered. If the obligor contests the validity or administrative enforcement of the order, the support enforcement agency shall register the order pursuant to this article.

Source: L. 97: Entire part amended with relocations, p. 540, § 11, effective July 1. L. 2003: (a) amended, p. 1257, § 31, effective July 1, 2004. L. 2015: (a) amended, (HB 15-1198), ch. 173, p. 554, § 30, effective July 1.

Editor's note: This section was formerly numbered as § 14-5-502.

COMMENT

Sections 501 through 506 are posited on the belief that U.S. employers ought not be burdened with enforcement of foreign income-withholding orders received directly from overseas. This view is inapplicable if a support enforcement agency is involved. The procedural safeguards built into the Title IV-D system of processing requests between Central Authorities provide reasonable assurance that the income withholding order to be enforced is genuine.

This section authorizes summary enforcement of an interstate or foreign child-support order through the administrative means available for intrastate orders if the agency deems it "appropriate" to do so. Under subsection (a), an interested party in another state or foreign country, which necessarily includes a private attorney or a support enforcement agency, may forward a support order or income-withholding order to a support enforcement agency of the responding state. The term "responding state" in this context does not necessarily contemplate resort to a tribunal as an initial step.

Subsection (b) directs the support enforcement agency in the responding state to consider and, if appropriate, to use that state's regular administrative procedures to process an out-of-state order. Thus, a local employer accustomed to dealing with the local agency need not change its procedure to comply with an out-of-state order. Similarly, the administrative agency is authorized to apply its ordinary rules equally to both intrastate and interstate orders. For example, if the administrative hearing procedure must be exhausted for an intrastate order before a contesting party may seek relief in a tribunal, the same rule applies to an interstate order received for administrative enforcement. This subsection also makes it clear that filing liens or submitting claims in legal actions do not require the initial registration of the order.

PART 6

REGISTRATION, ENFORCEMENT, AND MODIFICATION OF SUPPORT ORDER

INTRODUCTORY COMMENT

Sections 601 through 604 establish the basic procedure for the registration of a support order from another state or a foreign support order. Under RURESA when a tribunal of a responding state was requested to register and enforce an existing child-support order, the common practice was to ignore the request; rather, a separate proceeding would be initiated for the establishment of a new support order. This practice was specifically rejected by UIFSA; this practice under RURESA created the multiple support-order system that UIFSA was specifically designed to eliminate. Under Sections 205 through 207 the one-order system allows only one existing order to be enforced prospectively.

Sections 605 through 608 provide the procedure for the nonregistering party to contest registration of an order, either because the order is allegedly invalid, superseded, or no longer in effect, or because the enforcement remedy being sought is opposed by the nonregistering party. Other enforcement remedies may be available without resort to the UIFSA process under the law of the responding state. See Section 104.

The registration and enforcement provisions in Sections 601 through 608 are consistent with the "recognition and enforcement" provisions of the Convention. The terms of this article and Article 7 suffice to direct international support orders into the proper channels.

SUBPART A

REGISTRATION FOR ENFORCEMENT OF SUPPORT ORDER