§ 19-11-175.Registration of foreign child support order

This section is the foreign-country counterpart to § 19-11-168. It applies to a party or support enforcement agency seeking to modify, or to modify and enforce, a foreign child support order that is not under the Hague convention. If the order hasn’t been registered, that person may register it in Georgia under §§ 19-11-160 through 19-11-167 — the same documents, notice, contest and confirmation rules that apply to orders from other states.

The petition for modification may be filed at the same time as the request for registration, or at another time. The petition must specify the grounds for modification.

Registration is the procedure; § 19-11-174 supplies the power. A Georgia tribunal may modify a foreign child support order when the foreign country lacks or refuses to exercise jurisdiction to modify it under its own laws. Note the verbs: § 19-11-168 says a party seeking to modify another state’s order “shall” register it, while this section says a party “may” register a foreign order.

Orders under the convention — the Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, which § 19-11-101 defines — follow Part 7 of the article. Registration of a convention support order is covered in § 19-11-184.1, and limits on modifying a convention child support order are in § 19-11-184.6. The section was added in 2013.