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The Family Responsibility Office
The Family Responsibility Office (FRO) is part of the Ministry of the Attorney General. FRO operates under the authority of the Family Responsibility and Support Arrears Enforcement Act, 1996 to:
- collect support payments on behalf of recipients;
- enforce court-ordered support payments; and
- enforce certain domestic contracts and paternity agreements filed with the court.
FRO has approximately 172,000 cases. Most cases have three parties who have related but mutually exclusive interests:
- the support payor (the payor);
- the support recipient (the recipient); and
- the income source, which is often, but not always, an employer (for ease of reference I will refer to the income source as "the employer").
The employer is required to deduct income from the payor and remit it to FRO, in accordance with directions issued by FRO.
Each day, FRO mails more than 6,000 pieces of case-related correspondence. These letters and notices are sent to the three parties, as well as to lawyers, the courts, and others involved with the administration of the program. In the middle of each month FRO implements an annual cost of living allowance (COLA) adjustment for those cases which are entitled to an adjustment during that month. This adjustment involves a mail-out of amended support notices and/or COLA notifications to all affected payors, recipients and employers (called the COLA run).
FRO has categorized six employers as "multiple employers" because they garnishee funds from a large number of payors. Rather than sending these multiple employers up to 40 individually amended support notices, FRO mails them batches of the amended notices in a single envelope.
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