Collecting Support Overpayments

We have covered this topic before when Pennsylvania clarified and improved the procedure for collecting a support overpayment, but based upon a recent letter to the Philadelphia Daily News Personal Finance Columnist, Harry Gross, people still are having difficulty navigating the process understanding what their options are to recover over-payments for child support.

Two main ideas should be considered in this situation: first, no matter how wrong it was to have the person's tax refund garnished in the first place, the state's Domestic Relations Sections are not designed to simply offer refunds. The money had already been distributed to the payee and they can not simply reverse the transaction. While they can make direct deposits into the payee's checking account, they do not have the power to make a withdrawal (conversely, the payor can authorize wage garnishment).