Delegates from sixty-eight States and the European Community have finalized the Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and other Forms of Family Maintenance at the 21st Diplomatic Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

Basically, the states that ratify the convention agree to assist citizens from other states who have also ratified the convention to recover child support.

The United States immediately signed the Convention, the first (and, thus far, only) State to do so.

The following are some extracts from the press release that was issued at the beginning of the Diplomatic Session:

"A new Convention…designed to respond to the needs of children and other dependents by providing international procedures which are simple, swift, cost-effective, accessible, and fair."

Unpaid child support – as well as support of other dependent family members – amounts to billions of Euros worldwide. When the person liable for support lives abroad, the difficulties of recovery are often insurmountable. At present, international procedures are typically slow, complicated, costly, and under-utilized. They are simply not serving the needs of the children and other family dependents who, in a mobile world in which multinational families are no longer exceptional, are increasing in number exponentially. The new Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance is designed to respond to the often modest needs of children and other dependents by providing international procedures which are simple, swift, cost-effective, accessible, and fair."