Family Responsibility Office services during COVID-19
Learn how COVID-19 is impacting services at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).
Recommended for you
- Learn about paying and receiving child and spousal support
- Enforcing child and spousal support payments
- Child and spousal support when one person lives outside of Ontario
- Finding a lawyer
- Help us find child and spousal support payors who haven’t paid
- Deducting support payments from your employee’s earnings
- Drafting and changing a child or spousal support order
- Provide feedback or contact FRO’s director about an unresolved issue or complaint
Paying and receiving support
Support payors are expected to continue to make payments as per their court order. Inform us as soon as possible if your circumstances change due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and we will work with you. For example, contact us if your place of work closes or you are laid off due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
- We do not garnish federal benefit payments in response to COVID-19, including Canada Recovery Benefit, Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit and Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit
- We continue to garnish Employment Insurance and GST/HST credit payments, as needed
- Temporary school closures due to the COVID-19 outbreak do not meet the criteria to end child support
Support recipients will receive payments as we receive them. If we do not receive payments, we will take the appropriate actions to get payments flowing.
Getting information and contacting FRO
Clients can access case information 24/7 using FRO Online and by calling FRO for automated information. You need to call us and speak with an agent to sign up for FRO Online if you do not have access.
You can still mail us payments and documents. You can also securely send us documents using FRO Online.
We continue to register cases for support orders. Contact us to find out how you can register a recently issued court order with FRO.
Our process has not changed for withdrawing from FRO.
Employers and other income sources
You must continue to deduct support from a payor’s income and send it to us. Contact us if your business closes or the payor stops receiving income from you due to the COVID-19 outbreak. You could also fax or mail us a letter stating:
- your business has closed
- the expected time period for re-opening (if applicable)
- the payor’s name and case number
Once your business resumes, you would start deducting again.
Special or extraordinary expenses
We will continue to process special or extraordinary expense claims, also known as “section 7” expenses in a child support order. For example, these expenses can include expenses for sports and music lessons. Contact us if you have further questions about these expenses on your support order.
Legal documents and court operations
Getting Statements of Arrears and claims of section 7 expenses commissioned: We still need these documents to be commissioned for us to process them. Some lawyers and paralegals are now able to commission documents virtually. Please speak with a lawyer or paralegal to see if they can help you with this.
Legal service on FRO: Legal documents for any proceeding that is required to be served on the Director of the Family Responsibility Office must be served by email. Learn more about serving FRO.
Attending court: If you have a court date with the director of FRO, please contact the court directly for updated information about the court’s availability and any steps you will need to follow. Please also ensure you check the court websites for information about court operations in your region during this time.
