BB. Assignment of Orders

• Author: Julien D. Payne - Marilyn A. Payne
• Pages: 479-480

Page 479

Section 20.1 of the Divorce Act provides that an order for support may be assigned to a designated federal or provincial Minister of the Crown or to any member of the Council of the Yukon territory or of the Northwest Territories or of Nunavut. It is uncertain whether section 20.1 vests an exclusive authority in the recipient spouse or parent to assign the support order or whether the court may, of its own initiative, direct an assignment of the order, regardless of the wishes of the recipient spouse or parent.

Section 20.1 is intended to facilitate the enforcement of support orders and provide a means whereby welfare authorities may secure the reimbursement of funds paid out of the public purse to family dependants from the spouse or parent who has wilfully defaulted in making the court-ordered support payments. This section reinforces provincial systems of

Page 480

automatic enforcement that shift the burden of enforcing orders in default from the family dependants themselves to duly appointed enforcement personnel.²⁰⁰Given that a support order may be assigned to a Minister of the Crown or to a provincial agency, the parental obligation to support the children is not automatically terminated by the fact that the children are in foster care. If there has been no assignment, the question to be determined is whether the children have withdrawn from the charge of their parents, in which event the court may order retroactive variation of the...