If you are an employer (or income source), you have a very important role.

You help:

• Ontario families who rely on court-ordered child and spousal support receive their payments, and
• the person who is paying the support keep their payment records in good standing.

Under provincial law, you are required to deduct and send support payments to the Family Responsibility Office.

In turn, we forward the support payments to the support recipient.

How it works

If you have an employee who has been ordered to pay support by the court, we will send you the person's support deduction notice.

You:

• deduct the support payments from your employee's earnings, and
• send the payments to us.

This is normal practice in Ontario and across Canada. It does not mean that your employee is having money problems or is in debt. You do not have to speak to your employee about payments on the case. If either the support payor or recipient contacts you, please tell them to contact FRO.

Information about an employee's support deduction payments is confidential. You are legally required to make sure it is kept private.

The only people in your organization who need to know are the employee and the staff who make the deductions and send them to us (for example, your payroll staff).

The law states that employers cannot:

• dismiss
• discipline
• punish, or
• intimidate

any employee for making support payment deductions.