September 30, 2014: Earlier today, President Barack Obama signed HR 4890, which includes provisions for implementation of the 2007 Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. Under the new legislation, states will be required to enact the 2008 version of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) by the close of their 2015 legislative session. At that point, the United States will be able to ratify the Convention.
The road toward ratification began when Commissioner Margot Bean signed the Convention on behalf of the United States in November 2007, at the close of the diplomatic session in which the Child Support Convention was adopted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Convention entered into force in 2013, and has been in effect across the European Union since August 2014.