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If child support is owed under a court order or an agreement, a failure to pay the support owing is a breach of that order or agreement, and, in the case of orders, it's contempt of court as well. The courts, and society as a whole, place a high value on the financial support of children, and both take an extremely dim view of anyone who defaults on such an obligation in the absence of a very good excuse or some very compelling circumstances.
Someone who owes arrears of child support, the ''payor'', will likely be interested in the ways that the outstanding amount can be reduced, while a person to whom support is owing, the ''recipient'', will be interested in collecting the arrears. Someone who owes arrears will generally have a difficult time convincing the court to any part of reduce their debt. On the other hand, collecting arrears can be difficult as well, if for no other reason than you can't get blood from a stone. Unless the payor has another source of funds to draw upon, a recipient may discover that the outstanding support may never be recovered.
Despite these barriers and obstacleschallenges, it is possible for a payor to have their arrears reduced and, sometimes, cancelled altogether. At the same time, recipients have <span class="noglossary">access</span> to some very powerful and effective enforcement tools to collect outstanding arrears of support.
===Orders for child support===
If nothing else works to ensure that the payor complies with the child support order, the court can also jail the payor for up to 30 days.
Unfortunately for people who would rather be jailed than pay, section 231(3)(c) of the ''Family Law Act '' says that:
<blockquote><tt>imprisonment of a person under this section does not discharge any duties of the person owing under an order.</tt></blockquote>
Since orders for support require the payment of money, arrears can also be enforced as a "judgment debt " under the provincial ''[http://canlii.ca/t/84h5 Court Order Enforcement Act]''. They can also be enforced under the ''[http://canlii.ca/t/840m Family Maintenance Enforcement Act]'', and section 3(1)(l) of the act says that there is no time limit within which child support arrears must be enforced.
Payors can apply for an order reducing arrears that have accumulated under both the ''[[Divorce Act]]'' and the ''[[Family Law Act]]''. Such applications Applications like these must be made under the same legislation under which the original child support order was made.
===Agreements for child support===
Although recipients can enforce agreements and orders for child support on their own, most of the time recipients will give that job to the [http://www.fmep.gov.bc.ca/ Family Maintenance Enforcement Program] (FMEP). This is a provincial government program under the provincial ''[http://canlii.ca/t/840m Family Maintenance Enforcement Act]'' that tracks payments that are owing and those that are paid, calculates the interest owing on payments that are not made, and can impose fines when payments aren't made.
FMEP is a free service for recipients. Its purpose is to enforce the payment of child support and children's special expenses and extraordinary expenses, although the enforcement of special expenses and extraordinary expenses through FMEP isn't exactly straightforward. You should contact FMEP to ask what they can or cannot do about enforcing agreements and orders about the payment of children's special expenses and extraordinary expenses.
It's important to know that FMEP can't change agreements and orders about child support. While it can make important, judge-like decisions about who is and isn't entitled to receive child support when children are 19 years old or older, FMEP can't increase or decrease the amount of a child support obligation and it can't reduce or cancel arrears of child support.
It's also important to know that payors who want to apply to court to reduce or cancel arrears of child support accumulating under an agreement or order that's been filed with FMEP must serve FMEP, as well as the recipient, with their application. FMEP does not help recipients respond to applications to change support orders, set aside agreements, or reduce or cancel arrears. You'll have to do that on your own. But from the recipient's perspective, just having FMEP take over enforcement of the order or agreement can be a huge relief.
==Reducing and cancelling arrears==