Child support arrears: wage withholding, credit reporting, and license suspension, explained

Every other debt covered in this Library — a credit card, a medical bill, a personal loan — has to go through a lawsuit before a creditor can touch your paycheck, and it ages off your credit report on the same general clock. Child support arrears follow neither rule. Withholding starts the moment an order takes effect, the garnishment cap runs roughly double what applies to an ordinary debt, and a dedicated section of federal credit-reporting law exists just for this one category. None of it is administered by a private company or a debt buyer — it runs through your state's child support enforcement agency and, for two of the tools below, the federal government directly.

Withholding starts on the order itself — not after a missed payment

Under 42 U.S.C. § 666(b), federal law requires virtually every child support order issued or modified today to include immediate income withholding — sent directly to the paying parent's employer, effective on the order's own effective date, whether or not any payment has actually been missed yet. No separate lawsuit, no motion for garnishment, no judgment beyond the support order itself. The two narrow exceptions are a court finding of good cause not to require it, or a written agreement between both parents to an alternative arrangement — and even then, withholding kicks in automatically the moment the paying parent falls 30 days behind, or if the parent receiving support simply asks for it to start. Compare that to an ordinary creditor, who has to sue and win a money judgment first, or even a defaulted federal student loan, which at least requires 30 days' advance written notice before an administrative garnishment begins.

The garnishment cap is a different, much higher number

Federal wage-garnishment law caps how much of an ordinary debt can take from a paycheck at 25% of disposable earnings, or the amount above 30 times the federal minimum wage, whichever is less — the general rule covered in our explainer on being sued for a debt. Support orders run under a separate, higher ceiling in the same statute: 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b) allows up to 50% of disposable earnings where the paying parent is also supporting a current spouse or another child, and up to 60% where they aren't — each figure rising an additional 5 points, to 55% and 65%, for earnings being garnished to cover support that's more than 12 weeks past due.

Ordinary consumer debt: 25% cap

Support, supporting another dependent: 50% (55% if arrears)

Support, no other dependent: 60% (65% if arrears)

That's a federal ceiling, not a fixed number every state uses — some states set their own, lower support-withholding limit, and the actual percentage taken from a specific paycheck also has to account for any other garnishment already in place. Check with your state's child support enforcement agency for the number actually being applied, rather than assuming the federal maximum is what's coming out.

A credit-reporting rule with its own dedicated section of the FCRA

Most of what appears on a credit report gets there because a private furnisher chose to report it — see our furnisher-disputes explainer. Overdue child support runs through a different, specific provision: Section 622 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-1, which states that a credit bureau shall include overdue-support information in a consumer report once it's provided by a state or local child support enforcement agency (or independently verified by any government agency), as long as it doesn't predate the report by more than seven years. That "shall" is unusual — for almost every other kind of account, a bureau displays what a furnisher chooses to send it; here, federal law directs the bureau to include it once a qualifying government source has supplied it.

Separately, 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(7) requires every state to maintain the ability to report overdue support to the bureaus at all, tracing back to a 1984 federal amendment that set a $1,000-arrears floor for a state to respond when a bureau specifically asks about a particular parent. In practice, most states have gone well past that floor: routine, periodic reporting to all three bureaus on their own schedule, not just in response to a bureau's inquiry — so a smaller arrears balance isn't a safe assumption to make about what will or won't show up on a credit file.

Two enforcement tools that have nothing to do with your credit score

Federal law also requires every state to maintain the authority, under 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(16), "to withhold or suspend, or to restrict the use of," a driver's license, professional or occupational license, and recreational or sporting license belonging to someone who owes overdue support — reaching everything from a standard driver's license to a contractor's, cosmetologist's, or attorney's professional license, depending on the state.

A separate federal tool reaches a passport. Under 42 U.S.C. § 652(k), once a state certifies that a parent owes more than $2,500 in child support arrears, the State Department is required to deny a new passport application and may revoke, restrict, or limit one already issued — with a right to notice and an opportunity to contest the certification under 42 U.S.C. § 654(31). This tool got dramatically more active in 2026: the State Department announced on May 7, 2026, effective the next day, that it would begin proactively revoking already-issued, currently valid passports rather than only denying new applications — starting with roughly 2,700 people who owe $100,000 or more, before the program expands toward the ordinary $2,500 statutory threshold. A bill that would make passport revocation a mandatory rather than discretionary remedy, H.R. 6903, passed the House by voice vote on April 27, 2026, but had not been enacted into law as of this writing.

The federal government can intercept a tax refund at a lower bar than for other debts

Separately from the Treasury Offset Program that also reaches a defaulted federal student loan (see our explainer on that mechanism, which runs under 31 U.S.C. § 3720A), a dedicated child-support tax-refund offset exists under 42 U.S.C. § 664, coordinated between the state agency, the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, and the IRS. The dollar threshold to qualify is much lower than for most federal debts: $150 in arrears for a case involving a family that has received (or is receiving) TANF or foster-care assistance, and $500 for every other case. Once a case qualifies, an eligible federal tax refund is intercepted and applied to the arrears automatically.

What doesn't change: arrears generally don't expire, and they generally survive bankruptcy. The state-by-state statute-of-limitations clock covered in our explainer on time-barred debt is built around ordinary contract debt; several states impose no deadline at all on collecting child support arrears, and others run a much longer clock than the 3-to-6-year range typical for a credit card or medical bill — check your own state's rule directly rather than assuming an ordinary debt's timeline applies. Support obligations are also excluded from discharge in either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(5), a point covered in our bankruptcy explainer.

None of the above is legal advice for a specific order, arrears calculation, or modification request — a real dispute over any of it goes through your state's child support enforcement agency or a family-law attorney, not a credit-repair or debt-settlement company, neither of which has any authority over a support order.