A law in Utah denying hunting and fishing licenses to those with past due child support has contributed to an increase of child support payments and compliance in the past year.
H.B. 197 Fishing and Hunting Restrictions for Nonpayment of Child Support was passed during the 2020 General Session. After it went into effect in 2021, individuals who had over $2500 in unpaid child support for a year were restricted from getting a hunting or fishing license.
According to Liesa Stockdale, director of the Office of Recovery Services (ORS) for Utah, this type of law is meant to catch the attention of non-paying parents without resorting to criminal prosecution or jail time.
“If we can find somebody, we can find their income source, we can typically collect the child support,” said Stockdale. “When we’re not having success, it’s because we’re not able to get just that right kind of information for the person. … And so we are trying to find some creative ways that if people are slipping through all of those cracks, we can catch their attention.”
When the law went into effect last July 1, nearly 3,000 licenses were suspended. Since then, the ORS has received over $9 million from that group, which is $1.9 million more than the previous year — and 494 of those individuals also came into compliance with the law at some point.
“So there were some people who definitely wanted their license,” Stockdale said. “And we did see an increase in collections from this effort. There's no denying it.”
Stockdale also noted that the law allows for certain flexibility, such as allowing a one-month payment miss during a job change, as long as it’s paid back the next month. Parents can also contact the ORS about a modification to the payment size if they feel it’s not in line with their earnings.
“These are just methods of getting attention from people that are ignoring us,” she emphasized. “We always encourage parents to contact us and work with us and see if we can’t get the payments going in other ways.”
