Sec. 32. 19-A MRSA §3101-F, sub-§2, śC, as enacted by PL 1997, c. 669, §21, is amended to read:

C. The person or agency designated to receive payments in the income-withholding order or, if a person or agency is not designated, to the obligee.

Uniform Comment

(This is Section 506 of the Uniform Act.)

This section incorporates into the interstate context the law regarding defenses an employee-obligor may raise to an intrastate withholding order. Generally, States have accepted the IV-D requirement that the only viable defense is a "mistake of fact." 42 U.S.C. Section 666(b)(4)(A). This apparently includes "errors in the amount of current support owed, errors in the amount of accrued arrearage or mistaken identity of the alleged obligor" while excluding "other grounds, such as the inappropriateness of the amount of support ordered to be paid, changed financial circumstances of the obligor, or lack of visitation." H.R. Rep. No. 98-527, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 33 (1983). The latter claims must be pursued in a separate proceeding in the appropriate State, not in a UIFSA proceeding.

This procedure is based on the assumption that valid defenses to income withholding for child support are few and far between. Experience has shown that in relatively few cases does an employee-obligor have a complete defense, e.g., the child has died, another contingency ending the support has occurred, the order has been superseded, or there is a case of mistaken identity and the employee is not the obligor. An employee's complaint that "The child support is too high" must be ignored.

However, situations do arise where an employer has received multiple withholding notices regarding the obligor-employee and the same obligee. The notices may even allege conflicting amounts due, especially for payments on arrears. Additionally, many employees claim to have only learned of default orders when the withholding notice Is delivered to the employer; this leads to claims that the order being enforced through income withholding was entered without personal jurisdiction over the obligor-employee.

The 2001 rewording of Subsection (a) affirms that a simple. efficient, and cost-effective method for an employee-alleged obligor to assert a defense is to register the withholding order