767.70.Child support enforcement: notice and service of process.
Subch. VIII: Enforcement · Last amended 2005 · Current through 2025 Wisconsin Act 247 · Last verified September 8, 2026
Full Text of Section 767.70
Official Notes
Wisconsin prints certain labelled notes with the statute — effective-date notes, cross-references, and notes of the Judicial Council. They are reproduced verbatim below. The unlabelled digest of court decisions that the Legislative Reference Bureau prints after them is annotation rather than statute, and is not reproduced.
NOTE: 2005 Wis. Act 443 contains explanatory notes.
Cross-reference: See also ch. DWD 142, Wis. adm. code.
Amendment History
Wisconsin prints each section’s legislative history as a single “History” line naming every act that created or amended it, and every renumbering. It is reproduced verbatim below.
History: 1997 a. 191; 2005 a. 443 s. 21; Stats. 2005 s. 767.70.
Plain-English Summary
Support enforcement runs aground on people who move without telling anyone. This section says what counts as enough.
In an action to enforce or modify a child support judgment, the notice and service-of-process requirements of due process are satisfied if the court finds both that a diligent effort was made to ascertain the respondent's location, and that written notice was delivered to the most recent residential or employer address the respondent had themselves provided to the county child support agency.
The second half is the point. The chapter already obliges a payer to report every change of address and employer within a fixed number of business days, so the address on file is the one they chose to leave there. A person who stops updating it does not thereby become unservable.
Diligent effort defined by rule. The department must promulgate rules specifying the process it uses to locate a respondent, and those rules must use all reasonable means it has access to — electronic means, interfaces with other programmes, and information from the postmaster. So “diligent” is not left to argument case by case.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as proper notice in a Wisconsin support enforcement case?
A diligent effort to ascertain the respondent's location, and written notice delivered to the most recent residential or employer address the respondent provided to the county child support agency.
What if I moved and did not tell anyone?
Notice to the last address you gave the agency satisfies due process. The chapter separately obliges you to report a change of address and employer.
Who decides what a diligent effort is?
The department, by rule — and the rules must use all reasonable means it has access to, including electronic means, interfaces with other programmes, and information provided by the postmaster.