Child Support: A serious issue for single mothers and their children, but not a major concern many absentee fathers or for the legal system.
-A Feminist Dictionary

The money paid to you by the father of your child(ren) when you are separated, divorced, or unwed is referred to as “maintenance” or “child support.”

If you are a mom on social assistance, you will be forced to take the father(s) of your child(ren) to Family Court to seek child support. If you are an unwed mother, you will be forced to name the father of your child(ren), prove paternity in court, and sue him for maintenance.

Many single moms, including myself, do not want to name the father or sue him for paternity. You know that the man will not pay and it would create a lot of serious problems to constantly take him to court. Or perhaps you know the man is abusive and for that reason alone you don’t want him around you or your child(ren). Or perhaps you have the child(ren) out of choice and made a specific agreement with the father that he would not be involved in the child(ren)’s life. For mothers on social assistance, we are not given that choice. Social assistance policies insist that we take the father(s) to court to obtain child support. This is unfair.

The government of Nova Scotia introduced the Maintenance Enforcement Program in January, 1996. It has changed the way all maintenance orders are collected.

An InfoLine is available to provide general information about the Program. This service is available twenty-four hours a day by calling:

424-0050 (Halifax Region)
1-800-357-9248 (toll-free outside of Metro)

The following is taken directly from a Nova Scotia Maintenance Enforcement Program Fact Sheet.

The Nova Scotia Maintenance Enforcement Program (MEP) is committed to providing an effective system for collecting and enforcing maintenance payments. This program enforces maintenance orders, as well as marriage contracts and separation agreements that have been filed with the program and attempts to ensure that those who are entitled to maintenance receive their payments on a timely basis. There are no costs to enroll in the program for any person who is entitled to receive or obliged to pay maintenance.

When a maintenance order or agreement is enrolled in the program, MEP monitors and collects the payments, which are then disbursed to the recipient (person entitled to receive maintenance). If payments are not received from the payer (person required to pay maintenance) when due, they will take steps to have the payments made.

Anyone residing in Nova Scotia who has a current maintenance order or filed agreement from any court in Canada, or from some states or other countries can enroll in the Maintenance Enforcement Program. Effective January 1, 1996, all new maintenance orders from the Nova Scotia Supreme and Family Courts will be automatically registered with the program.
An enrollment kit must be completed and filed with the program by the persons entitled to receive maintenance or by those who pay maintenance. The Program will be contacting you if you have an order or agreement presently registered with the Family Court.

The person required to pay maintenance must send payments to the Director of Maintenance Enforcement. These payments must be received by the date(s) set out in the maintenance order. The Director will then forward the payment to the recipient.

The order can be enforced if the payer lives outside Nova Scotia, as long as the payer lives in Canada or in a state or country which has a reciprocal agreement with Nova Scotia. If you do not know where your payer lives, MEP can request a search through computer databanks of a number of provincial and federal agencies.
Failure by the payer to make payments in a timely fashion may result in either one or all of the following actions:

The responsibilities of the recipient once the maintenance order is enrolled in the program are as follows:

The responsibilities of the payer once the maintenance order is enrolled in the program are as follows:
• To make all payments through the program and not directly to the recipient
• To advise MEP of any change in address, employment, or other changes of circumstance
• To put the case number on all cheques and correspondence
• To ensure that payments are received by the date they are due

Be advised that the MEP staff cannot excuse defaulted payments for any reason. MEP does not deal with problems related to custody or access, they only enforce the maintenance requirement of the order. All information is kept confidential and used only for the purpose of enforcing maintenance orders.

The MEP has a computerized telephone service called InfoLine which provides general information about the Program. You can get specific information relating to your case upon entering your case number and your personal identification number (PIN). The Program will send you these numbers upon enrollment of your case.

InfoLine Numbers:
Halifax Region: 424-0050
(Within NS): 1-800-357-9248

Strict Provincial guidelines have been laid out to determine the amount paid per child per month based on the annual gross income of the parent making the payments. It is a percentage of the paying parent’s income. If your ex-partner is claiming less than what you know he is making, make sure you tell the judge at your hearing. If he is crying poor, but you are aware of external or unreported income, disclose what you know.
See the Numbers to Know section for telephone numbers and addresses of Family Courts around Nova Scotia.

If you are a single mom on ‘welfare’, you will find the Department of Community Services has put a number of rules and regulations on your sex life. Some people call these the “Man In the House” rules or “Spouse in the House” rules.

There are people within the Department of Community Services, who check our houses or apartments to make sure that there isn’t a penis over eighteen years old living with or even being friends with us. A neighbour could also be the one to call Community Services and tell on you if they don’t like you or want to get even over something. So watch out.

This whole system is extremely sexist. Policy makers in the Department of Community Services assume that if we have sex with a man then he must be supporting us. The worst part of this is that there are no clear guidelines over what constitutes a “spouse in the house”, the unspoken rule seems to be that a partner shouldn’t be staying over more than three nights a week, but this isn’t written down anywhere, nor is it official – making the whole system appear arbitrary and unfair.

Regardless of whether we are lesbian or heterosexual single mothers, the Department of Community Services does not believe we should have sex. No other part of Canadian Society does not believe we should have sex. No other part of Canadian Society would tolerate this invasion of privacy. We will not either. We will have sex with another consenting adult if we choose. We will control our own bodies. We will fight like hell if our case worker or government tries to tell us we are not allowed to control our bodies. To resist these rules which violate our rights, we will share our situations and organize with other single mothers and with other oppressed peoples. As Lillian Allen sings, “And I fight back!”