You Leave Québec
Leaving Québec while paying or receiving support under a judgment handed down in Québec may affect your support payments.
If you pay support on a regular basis and leave Québec, you must continue to make your payments even after you have left the province.
You make support payments to us and move from Québec to Florida. In this case, you can continue to pay us support and we will continue to give it to the support recipient. You can also choose to make your support payments directly to the support recipient, as long as they agree to this arrangement and there are no payments overdue.
For more information, see the Receiving Support Payments Directly – Applying for an Exemption page.
If you pay support on an irregular basis and you leave Québec, we will consider that there has been a default in payment. Consequently, a procedure called the “reciprocal enforcement of support judgments” can be used to enforce the judgement where you move.
This procedure makes it possible for Québec judgments to be enforced in jurisdictions designated by the Québec government, as though they had been rendered by the competent courts of those jurisdictions. The jurisdictions currently designated by the Québec government under the Act respecting reciprocal enforcement of maintenance orders are the provinces and territories of Canada, and 10 U.S. states—California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
We will use the procedure only if the following three conditions are met:
- You are not paying on a regular basis the support payments you owe the support recipient under a judgment that is enforceable in Québec.
- We have used all available recourses against your seizable assets in Québec and the result is insufficient to pay the support in full.
- You reside in a jurisdiction designated by the Québec government.
When the support judgment was handed down, you were living in Québec. You then moved to Ontario and stopped making regular support payments to the support recipient. All possible recourses were used to recover the amounts you owed, but this was not enough to ensure full payment of the support. In this case, our next step is to forward the judgment to Ontario so that the necessary steps to collect the support payments can be taken there, since the Act to facilitate the payment of support does not apply outside Québec.
If the procedure for the reciprocal enforcement of support judgments does not apply, the support recipient must take steps to continue receiving support. They can speak to a legal advisor to determine whether it is possible for the Québec judgment to be recognized and enforced abroad. However, this will be at their own expense, since the Act to facilitate the payment of support does not apply outside Québec.
If you receive support on a regular basis and you leave Québec, the payer of support must continue to pay it to us. This is because they still live in Québec and therefore remain subject to the Act to facilitate the payment of support. We will continue to collect support and pay it to you, regardless of where you now live.
If the payer of support wants to pay it directly to you after you leave Québec, you must agree to jointly apply for an exemption from the obligation to pay support through us.
Advances
We cannot advance support payments if the payer or recipient of support lives outside Québec.
In such cases, we can only pay the support recipient amounts that we have already collected.
Delays
If support is collected outside Québec because the payer of support lives outside the province, it usually takes longer to receive support payments than if both parties lived in Québec. This is because such cases are complex and involve more people and organizations.
However, the government is working with the appropriate authorities in the designated jurisdictions to speed processing up in such cases.
Role of the Ministère de la Justice
The Ministère de la Justice is responsible for applying the Act respecting reciprocal enforcement of maintenance orders.
The person who receives support further to a judgment subject to the Act to facilitate the payment of support does not have any steps to take with the Ministère. We take care of all the necessary formalities.
Judgment from a designated jurisdiction
If a support judgment handed down under the applicable law in a designated jurisdiction is filed or registered, it is as if it had been handed down by a competent court in Québec. In such cases, we can collect support payments.
When the judgment was handed down, the support recipient and payer were living in Ontario. Recently, the payer moved to Québec. Since the payer was not respecting their obligations towards the recipient, the Ontario government forwarded the judgment to us so that it could be filed or registered according to the applicable law. We then undertook the necessary steps to collect the support payments.