Your Rights

When you receive child support services from the State of Alabama, you have the right to:

• Full and Fair Treatment

You have the right to receive all the services necessary and appropriate in your case to get or collect child support. You have the right to receive those services regardless of your sex, color, race, national origin, or any handicap or disability. Notices are posted in all of our offices telling you what to do if you think you are being treated unfairly.

Confidentiality

You have the right to confidential treatment of all the private information that you give us or that we find in our investigation about your case. This means that the agencies involved will not tell any outside agency or individual what we know about you or your family unless we must do so in order to collect child support for your child. Even then, we will tell only what is absolutely necessary in your case.

Notification

You have the right to be told about all important actions concerning your case. We will tell you about the progress of your case whenever you ask us. We will also tell you whenever there is going to be a court hearing in your case, and whenever we get an order or determine that we cannot get an order in your case. If you receive TANF, we will continue to provide child support services when your TANF payments stop, unless you ask us to no longer provide services. We will tell you upon request how much money we have collected in your case and how we have distributed it. Finally, we will tell you when we plan to close your case.

Participation

You have the right to participate in any court actions involving your case. You have the right to ask for and participate in the review of your support order.

Due Process Statement

Your involvement in the Alabama Department of Human Resources Child Support Enforcement Program gives you the right to request a review of any action or inaction by the agency.

You have three options:

1. You may request a conference with the child support worker who has been handling your case.
2. You may request a review of your case at the county level without a conference with the worker.
3. You may request an administrative hearing at the State Office level of Child Support Enforcement.

Your request for any of these three options must be submitted in writing to the County Department of Human Resources that is handling your child support case. An administative hearing request may be sent to the county office and/or to the State Office of Child Support Enforcement at 50 North Ripley Street, Montgomery, AL 36130.

All programs of the Department of Human Resources are administered in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and all other Federal and State Civil Rights Laws.