Ombudsman says he gets too many complaints about Family Responsibility Office
Andre Marin says system has improved but 'over $200,000 not going to needy parents'
The Canadian Press, July 28, 2015
The Ontario agency responsible for enforcing court-ordered child and spousal support payments has been singled out again by the ombudsman because of a growing number of complaints.
There were 1,167 complaints about the Family Responsibility Office in 2014-15, a slight increase over the previous year but up considerably from 794 complaints two years ago, ombudsman Andre Marin said in his annual report Tuesday.
There's "a new wrinkle" that saw 350 people denied a total of $845,000 in family payments they were entitled to because they had also been receiving welfare or disability support and then moved off the social assistance program, added Marin.
"These are people with children who should be getting that money -- didn't get that money, and again this year we're looking at 274 (families) totalling $214,000," he said. "Improved, but still over $200,000 not going to needy parents."
There are also serious problems in cases where the person paying support or the recipients live outside Ontario, something the ombudsman raised in previous reports, and there are ongoing problems with mistakes by staff at the FRO.
No support payments for year
The report cites the case of one woman who complained she stopped getting support payments for more than a year, and couldn't get anyone at the agency to call her back. It took Marin's staff more than half a year to get her the $10,000 she was owed.
"We raised the issue with senior FRO staff, and more than seven months after the problem was identified, it finally acknowledged that the case worker had wrongly determined that the woman was no longer entitled to support," wrote Marin.
Sheila McKinnon, of Courtice, Ont., told The Canadian Press she's had problems with FRO for years because her ex-husband doesn't inform the agency when he changes jobs, and it won't impose fines or penalties to force him to comply.
"FRO has told me they have no way of making him disclose his employer so they can garnish his wages," McKinnon said in an email.
The agency wrote her in April explaining why it won't fine her ex-husband for not disclosing where he's working.
"FRO made the decision to focus our efforts on collecting court ordered support obligations rather than exercising the offences provision under our legislation for a number of reasons," wrote Carolyn Calwell, assistant deputy minister of Community and Social Services. "The most compelling reason is that any fines paid upon conviction do not benefit the support recipient."
Marin, who hopes to be reappointed for a third, five-year term, admitted he made mistakes in May with a social media campaign urging his 31,700 Twitter followers to pressure Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberals to keep him as ombudsman. He had retweeted dozens of posts from supporters, including one that accused the Liberals of turning Ontario into a "banana republic" and another saying Wynne is "more corrupt" than FIFA, soccer's scandal-plagued governing body.
"Things were happening fast that night, and the more you're on Twitter, it's like a highway, you can have fender benders," he said.
© The Canadian Press
Ontario's child financial support collection agency has big problems
Ontario's Family Responsibility Office has many problems
Quote from Ontario Government Ombudsman -"an equal opportunity error-prone program,."'
Support recipients not getting their money.
Men who've been meeting their court-ordered obligations have trouble getting the FRO to stop taking payments when it's supposed to. Read More ..
Pilloried, broke, alone
March 25, 2000
Divorced fathers get a bad rap for not supporting their children. The truth is, many can't. And, tragically, some are driven to desperate measures, including suicide.
In his suicide note, Jim, the father of four children, protests that "not all fathers are deadbeats." Jim hanged himself because he couldn't see any alternative. Even now, his children are unaware of the circumstances of their father's death. Meeno Meijer, National Post George Roulier is fighting to regain money wrongfully taken from his wages by the Ontario child-support collection agency. Chris Bolin, National Post Alan Heinz, a Toronto firefighter, has gone bankrupt fighting for the return of his daughter, 3, from Germany. No one will help him, but German authorities are trying to collect child support from him.
Whenever fathers and divorce are discussed, one image dominates: the 'deadbeat dad,' the schmuck who'd rather drive a sports car than support his kids. Because I write about family matters, I'm regularly inundated with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mail from divorced men. It's not news that divorced individuals have little good to say about their ex-spouses. What I'm interested in is whether the system assists people during this difficult time in their lives, or compounds their misery. From the aircraft engineer in British Columbia, to the postal worker on the prairies, to the fire fighter in Toronto, divorced fathers' stories are of a piece: Though society stereotypes these men relentlessly, most divorced dads pay their child support. Among those who don't, a small percentage wilfully refuse to (the villains you always hear about).
What you haven't been told is that the other men in arrears are too impoverished to pay, have been ordered to pay unreasonable amounts, have been paying for unreasonable lengths of time, or are the victims of bureaucratic foul-ups. Read More ..
Non-dad on hook for support
Edmonton and Calgary Sun
Feb 5, 2005
EDMONTON -- An Edmonton judge has decided a divorced dad has to make child support payments, even though the child isn't his. Justin Sumner had an on-again-off-again relationship with the woman he eventually married, Dawn Sumner.
She already had a child from a previous relationship with a man named Rob Duncan, and as she and Justin broke up and reunited, Dawn was sexually involved with both men.
When she found she was pregnant, she called Justin, who recognized there was a possibility that Duncan was the father, but later concluded he was the dad.
Father Committeed Suicide after calling Family Responsibility Office
Andrew T. Renouf committed suicide on or about October 17, 1995 because he had 100% of his wages taken by the Family Responsibility Office, a child support collection agency of the Government of Ontario, Canada.
He asked for assistance for food and shelter from the welfare office and was refused because he had a job, even though all of his wages were taken by the Family Responsibility Office.
Andy was a loving father that hadn't seen his daughter in 4 years.
A memorial service was held in October, 1998, for Andy in front of the Family Responsibility Office at 1201 Wilson Avenue, West Tower, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is in the Ministry of Transportation grounds in the Keele St. & Hwy 401 area. All members of the Ontario Legislature were invited by personal letter faxed to their offices. Not one turned up. The Director of the Family Responsibility Office and his entire staff were invited to the brief service. The Director refused and wouldn't let the staff attend the service although it was scheduled for lunch time. There was a peaceful demonstration by followed by a very touching service by The Reverend Alan Stewart. The text of the service will soon be able to be read below.
The service made the TV evening news.
It was Andy's last wish that his story be told to all. YOU CAN READ HIS SUICIDE NOTE
Auditor General of Ontario
Disasterous Report on the Family Reponsibility Office FRO 2010
80% of Telephone calls don't get answered
Payers and recipients do not have direct access to their assigned enforcement services officer
"There is only limited access to enforcement staff because many calls to the Office do not get through or are terminated before they can be answered."
"The Office is reviewing and working on only about 20% to 25% of its total cases in any given year."
"At the end of our audit in April 2010, there were approximately 91,000 bring-forward notes outstanding, each of which is supposed to trigger specific action on a case within one month. The status of almost one-third of the outstanding bring-forward notes was "open," indicating either that the notes had been read but not acted upon, or that they had not been read at all, meaning that the underlying nature and urgency of the issues that led to these notes in the first place was not known. In addition, many of the notes were between one and two years old."
"For ongoing cases, the Office took almost four months from the time the case went into arrears before taking its first enforcement action. For newly registered cases that went straight into arrears, the delay was seven months from the time the court order was issued."
Read the shocking report by The Auditor General of Ontario Report on the Family Responsibility Office
Ontario agency admits to overbilling on child support payments
The Ottawa Citizen
January 14, 2012
TORONTO - Ontario's controversial Family Responsibility Office has been overbilling 1,700 parents, mostly fathers, for as long as 13 years, the province admitted Friday.
The 1,700 parents were overbilled by an average $75 each month, after the agency wrongly applied a cost of living adjustment that was eliminated in 1997.
Those who were overpaid will not be forced to give the money back.
Instead, taxpayers will foot the $5.3 million bill for the agency's mistake.
"This error's been found and it's being corrected," said Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy. "We're going to be reaching out to those individuals (who were overbilled) and talking to them about their situation, formally alerting them."
The Family Responsibility Office, or FRO, is responsible for ensuring court-ordered child support payments are made. Read More .. than 97 per cent of all payers overseen by the office are male.
Milloy said the agency discovered the problem at some point in 2011. No one will be fired for the mistakes, he added.
"I see this as something very serious," he said in an interview. "I'm not trying to minimize it, but … there's been lots of action taken to reform FRO, to update computer systems, to update customer relations and it's on a much firmer footing."
The billing mistake is only the latest controversy to engulf FRO.
"Canada's national newspaper for professional women"
The Family Responsibility Office Under Scrutiny
On June 9, 2005 the McGuinty government announced the passage of Bill 155, legislation that promised to increase enforcement, improve fairness and enhance efficiency at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).
However, the legislation did not address the problem of accountability and, as things now stand, the FRO is a threat to every Canadian affected by a government regulated support and custody arrangement system. Think of George Orwell's 1984 and you'll have a good picture of how issues are handled at the FRO.
They have legal power to extort money from Canadians, but are not responsible or accountable for their actions.
Last year an FRO staff member decided not to wait for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver and took it upon themselves to suspend his license because he was, understandably, behind on his payments, having lost his job earlier in the year. Although he was looking for work, the FRO cut off the only way he knew of to earn a living. His suicide note explained how he'd lost all hope. Is this what we want FRO to be doing? Read More ..