Chile, where 84% of child support is not paid, this Friday launched a national registry of indebted parents, who now risk having bank funds withheld and even in public service. Also prevent the processes from completing.
The measure of the National Registry of Alimony Debtors opens a “window of hope” for thousands of mothers who have had to support their families alone.
The Registry seeks to facilitate the identification of parents with alimony debts for three or five consecutive discontinuous months. They will be fined for not guaranteeing payment, such as withholding their tax refund money or barring them from renewing their driver’s licenses and passports.
“Now there can be hope of paying a pension for my daughter’s father,” mother Jocelyn Duarte, 39, who lives in the municipality of Buin, told AFP. Santiago, and whose 21-year-old daughter has not received alimony since the age of two.
Patricia Marambio, who raised two children alone with money from informal jobs, also believes that registration is progress, although she admits it is still too slow a solution to a subsistence problem that she has to face every day. Must be dealt with
“All the money I earn is for my children’s basic needs and I think there will be progress in this record of debtors, but very slowly,” says a disbelieving Marambio, who refers to this fact as “economic violence”. Describes as that his father children have not paid pension since 2019.
Marambio, 45, is the founder of “Colectiva Resistencia Materna,” which collaborates with thousands of single mothers and promotes public policies to improve their lives.
– “Daddy Heart” –
Parents who pay pensions in Chile are called “heart daddies” and this group included former presidential candidate Franco Parisi, who came third in the first round of elections last November.
The 55-year-old Parsi campaigned from the United States without setting foot in Chile, where he is being sued by his ex-wife for alimony.
In Chile, 49.3% of families are financially supported by their mothers. Before the rules went into effect, about 72,000 minors had accumulated debt to pay their monthly alimony.
Official figures show that nine out of 10 borrowers are men.
– collection –
With the previous law, collecting unpaid pensions was “a difficult ordeal”, says Leonor Etcheberry, an academic in family law.
Without the registry, he says, many debtors hid from justice with the help of their families or resorted to legal loopholes such as getting rid of their assets or putting them in others’ names.
No one asked parents when they were looking for a job or seeking a bank loan if they owed child support. But now with the registry “it will affect when they want to get a job or a loan,” he says.
Registration in the Registry shall be electronic and ordered by the Family Court. To get out of it, you have to repay the debt or sign an agreement.
To guarantee payment, the money can be used to fund the sale of a property or vehicle. In the case of public employees, the debtors would keep a percentage of their salary. If you are in the Registry, you will not be able to move up in rank.
– Esperanza –
The debtors’ registry is included in the new law on alimony payments effective, which was approved by the Chilean Congress in August and which will enter into force in six months.
The law will also allow funds to be withheld from the bank accounts of debtors. If there is no money in the accounts, up to 50% of the retirement funds may be requested.
“My daughter and I are going to be able to get a little sober and her father will have to pay, he won’t be able to leave the country, sell the vehicle or get a loan,” says Jocelyn Duarte, who spent three years with a degenerative disease. didn’t work till
MSA/PA/PB/DG
