Child support in Puerto Rico can be ordered, revised or modified in any of two ways: through ASUME or through court.
ASUME is the main government entity for child support in Puerto Rico.
ASUME, an acronym for “Administración para el Sustento de Menores”, which directly translated reads “Administration for the Sustenance of Minors”, is the administrative entity whose main obligations are the management, modification and enforcement of child support determinations in Puerto Rico. Among the most important tasks that ASUME carries out is to execute orders to comply with child support for children living with their custodial parents in our jurisdiction.
On the other hand, any court in Puerto Rico is able to modify and enforce child support determinations. These specialized courts have a separate division who employ child support examiners who use their expertise to recommend judges on the correct procedure and specific findings of court ordered hearings held to calculate and determine how much child support is to be ordered to the non-custodial parent.
Why the difference? Child support is of such a great importance in our jurisdiction, that both venues have the legal right and obligation to guarantee that no child goes without sustenance. Therefore, great deference is granted by every arm of the state to make sure that these determinations are granted and carried out in the fastest, easiest, and most precise way.
What happens when the non-custodial parent lives in the United States?
Every state and U.S. territory is independent, which means that each one benefits of being able to govern itself separately from each other. All of them are linked by a federal government, which guarantees that every legal process is carried out as evenly as possible between each state. Federal laws usually have preference over state laws, but they must be balanced in their execution by both state and federal governments.
In order to make sure that child support determinations in each state are carried out by other states, Congress drafted the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, or UIFSA. This law allows the enforcement of child support determinations from one state or territory in another state. The UIFSA also requires that child support enforcement be granted equal treatment, regardless of which state ordered it, and which state must enforce it. It provides methods such as wage garnishment, debt collection, freezing of assets and several other economic means of assuring that the ordered child support is retained from the non-custodial parent, and ends up where it is needed the most.
The UIFSA applies to Puerto Rico child support orders, thus they can be enforced in any of the 50 states. It does have one caveat: The child support must be ordered by a court.
ASUME, with its expedited and informal approach which helps to order, modify and enforce child support, is the most common venue for child support petitions. These petitions are informal, usually do not require a lawyer, and can be granted through a couple of uncomplicated steps. Court ordered child support must comply with the usual legal formalisms that any other petition must include, such as a pleading, a summons and the same strict due process of any other legal process.
Child support petitions and reviews through ASUME only have to comply with a few letters written to the parties involved, and can be granted in a much shorter time. They are not hindered by the overburdened court schedule, and benefit from a presumption that the process was carried out correctly by law, but without the strict adherence requiered by the court process. Usually, a few letters later, and the process is over in a few weeks, instead of months.
Once ASUME orders that child support be granted to a minor, this determination must be validated in court for it to be enforceable in another state under the UIFSA.
If the non-custodial parent lives in another state, it is not until a court in Puerto Rico grants validity to the child support determination from ASUME that the UIFSA comes into play. Since the determination has been through ASUME, courts grant these deference and assume that they have validly been scrutinized. The court order is almost always granted, and therefore this determination is now enforceable by local child support authorities in other states. Now, local authorities can collect the child support in any way that the local law permits.
In my experience, non-custodial parents usually receive a letter from ASUME, along with a PIPE, and do not pay much attention to the request for information that must be submitted to ASUME. Some of them disregard this letter, thinking that it will go away, since Puerto Rico laws do not apply to them in another state. While this may not be completely true, the UIFSA grants ASUME the right to mandate child support, and ASUME can and will do so, with or without the parent’s input, representation or approval. A few months later, they receive a letter from their local child support agency informing them that their wage will be debited the amount due monthly for child support, and call me in outrage, only to hear that it may be too late to review their correctly determined child support. Sometimes, there are options still available. In every case, the best practice is to participate in the process from the beginning, and insure that it is carried out in the best interest of everyone involved.
The obligation to provide Child Support payments in Puerto Rico ceases when the minor reaches adulthood. 
