The Danish Debt Collection Agency’s handling of its task of helping families collect child support, for example additional child support, from debtors abroad has through a number of years been so inadequate that it can be characterised as fundamental authority negligence. The Ombudsman makes a statement about this after having investigated the Agency’s work in the field.
‘When you talk about child support, you talk about money that can make a big difference to families’ living conditions. Therefore, the authorities ought to have taken the necessary steps to ensure an efficient collection effort in the field and thereby measure up to its legal obligation’, says Parliamentary Ombudsman Niels Fenger.
An important precondition in order to collect money from debtors abroad is knowing where they reside The Ombudsman’s critisicm especially refers to the fact that, in his opinion, the Danish Debt Collection Agency has for years done too little to solve the problems connected with obtaining adress information of debtors abroad for instance not having done enough in order to get international agreements finalised.
The Ombudsman also points out that there has been limited system support as well as manual case processing steps in the collection abroad of child support and that the Danish Debt Collection Agency has only recently established procedures for support requests to foreign authorities.
The Danish Debt Collection Agency took on the task of helping families collect child support from debtors abroad in 2018. However, the Ombudsman finds that it was not until the end of 2022 that the Agency implemented initiatives to ensure a more efficient collection from debtors abroad.
The Ombudsman gives his statement on the basis of an own-initiative investigation that he started after having found that there was a lack of progress in the Danish Debt Collection Agency’s work with collecting Danish child support abroad.
The Ombudsman has informed Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, Parliament’s Fiscal Affairs Committee and the Minister for Taxation about the result of his investigation.
Read the Ombudsman's statement (in Danish only).
Further details:
Director of International Relations Klavs Kinnerup Hede, e-mail: kkh@ombudsmanden.dk