Child support warrants and liens

Support arrears as a lien

Support here means child support and the other domestic support obligations the bankruptcy code defines, and arrears means support that fell due and went unpaid. Some states let a lien for that arrears sit longer than an ordinary judgment lien.

Start with Nevada, where the clock simply does not run. A lien for child support arrearages continues until the judgment is satisfied. NRS 17.150¹ says so in those words. Arizona reaches the same destination by a different route: a judgment lien for support stays in effect until it is satisfied or lifted. A.R.S. 33-964² puts it beside the lien the state itself obtains.

Other named states shorten the reach or protect the lien from dormancy rather than extending it forever. In Idaho a recorded lien for installment support covers only the payments that are delinquent or not made when due. Idaho Code 10-1110³ limits it to that amount, and separately runs a child support lien until ten years after the last child's death or emancipation, unless the judgment is renewed, satisfied earlier, or stayed on appeal. Georgia's dormancy rules do not apply to orders for child or spousal support at all, under O.C.G.A. 9-12-60⁴. Kansas keeps a child support judgment from becoming dormant, though K.S.A. 60-2403⁵ adds a sting: if it would have gone dormant, it ceases to operate as a lien on the debtor's real estate from that date while staying on the record unreleased.

Arkansas decides a threshold question others leave implied. For its lien statute, judgments include any order for payment of support for a child through the registry of the court, under Ark. Code 16-65-117⁶. So the support order is the lien-bearing judgment, not a separate instrument.

Florida sets an outer clock without, in the section at hand, naming what starts it. A lien securing child support lapses 20 years after the original filing of the warrant or other document required by law to establish it. Fla. Stat. 55.204(2)⁷ measures from that filing. Which Florida statute first makes past-due support a lien, and what document is recorded to create it, is not settled by the sections here, and this page will not guess. What is clear is that Florida's clerk records claims of lien and tax warrants in the official records, under Fla. Stat. 28.222(3)(a)⁸, the same place a searcher would look for the rest.

How New York collects support

New York gives a support creditor collection tools an ordinary creditor does not have. Whether a support debt lands on the county clerk's judgment docket the way a tax warrant does is a question the sections here do not resolve, so this section describes the collection, not a warrant.

Set the tax warrant beside it as the clear case. A New York State tax warrant is filed with the county clerk, who enters the taxpayer's name in the judgment docket, and the amount then becomes a lien on the taxpayer's real, personal and other property, though it reaches personal property only if the warrant is also filed with the department of state. Tax Law 692(d)⁹ lays that out step by step. No statute here says a child support obligation reaches the docket by the same mechanism, so this page does not say it does. For how a tax warrant outranks later claims, see state tax warrants as senior claims.

What the sections do provide is execution. Where a support judgment or order is payable to the support collection unit, that unit may issue the execution itself and satisfy the debt out of the debtor's real and personal property and the debts owed to the debtor, under CPLR 5230(b)¹⁰. The same unit may issue an income execution when the debtor defaults under CPLR 5241(b)(1)¹¹, and a restraining notice under CPLR 5222(a)¹².

And support goes to the front of the line. Where executions compete for the same proceeds, executions for child support take priority over any other assignment, levy or process, under CPLR 5234(b)¹³. Bank account protections that shield part of an ordinary debtor's account fall away when the debt is support, under CPLR 5222(k), provided the notice carries the required legend. Federal law widens the wage reach too: a support order may take up to 50 percent of disposable earnings where the debtor supports another spouse or child, or 60 percent where not, under 15 U.S.C. 1673(b)(2)¹⁴. Those become 55 and 65 percent to the extent the earnings enforce support for a period before the twelve-week period ending at the start of that workweek. The figures are ceilings, not what a court orders.

Support in bankruptcy

Support is a category of its own in the bankruptcy code, and almost every protection a bankruptcy gives a debtor has a hole in it shaped like support.

A domestic support obligation, the code calls it: a debt owed to or recoverable by a spouse, former spouse or child of the debtor, or that child's parent, legal guardian or responsible relative, or a governmental unit, in the nature of support, established by a separation agreement, divorce decree, court order or agency determination. 11 U.S.C. 101¹⁵(14A) sets out each of those conditions. Whether the paper is expressly so designated does not control; the definition reaches the debt either way.

Such a debt survives the discharge. 11 U.S.C. 523(a)(5)¹⁶ lists it among the debts that a discharge under sections 727, 1141, 1192, 1228(a), 1228(b) or 1328(b) does not wipe out, and 11 U.S.C. 1328(a)(2)¹⁷ carries the same result into the full-payment chapter 13 discharge. A chapter 13 debtor who owes support must certify that the amounts due have been paid before the court grants the discharge at all, under 11 U.S.C. 1328(a).

Liens and property follow. A judicial lien securing a debt of the kind specified in section 523(a)(5) is excepted from the liens a debtor may avoid, under 11 U.S.C. 522(f)(1)¹⁸(A). Property the debtor exempts stays liable for a support debt during and after the case, under 11 U.S.C. 522(c)(1), which is a stated exception to the rule that exempt property is otherwise off limits. Collection of a domestic support obligation from property that is not property of the estate is not stopped by the automatic stay, nor is income withholding for a domestic support obligation under a judicial or administrative order or a statute, under 11 U.S.C. 362(b)(2)¹⁹(B) and (C). And a support payment the debtor made before filing cannot be clawed back as a preference, to the extent it was a bona fide payment of a support debt, under 11 U.S.C. 547(c)(7)²⁰.

What this does not cover

A handful of named states, plus the federal code. That is the whole map here.

Eight named states, plus the federal code. Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Georgia, Kansas, Arkansas and Florida each appear because a statute covered each one, and nothing from any of them travels to the other states. They set their own clocks. Florida's question stands open. Which statute makes past-due support a lien, and what document creates it, is left unresolved here, so the 20-year lapse runs from a filing those statutes name only as the warrant or other document required by law. In New York, whether a support debt reaches the county clerk's judgment docket the way a tax warrant does is left unresolved too.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether a support lien on a particular record is alive, and what ends it, is a question for counsel with the file open. What a page can do is narrower. When a support lien turns up on a search, the useful questions are which state created it, when it was filed, and how long that state says it lasts, because a discharge will not be the thing that ends it.