Bermuda’s Attorney General, Senator Kathy Lynn Simmons will hold a news conference later today to discuss the $46.7 million in arrears for child support and other Throne Speech initiatives.
You may recall the disclosure made last Friday by Governor John Rankin that as of the end of August, there was close to $47 million in arrears in unpaid child support payments through Bermuda’s courts, for some 1,840 cases.
He noted that the new Progressive Labour Party administration plans to clamp down on delinquent parents in arrears, to “ensure full compliance by those who are ordered to pay child support, but refuse to do so”. Moving forward, he said the Government will initiate a full assessment of Bermuda’s Child Support System “to analyse the deficiencies of its enforcement measures to create new enforcement options”. Access to alternative resolutions for disputes will also be simplified to reach resolutions more quickly “for the child’s benefit”.
The Attorney General is likely to expand on that initiative and two others – the proposed Sex Offenders Register and Legal Aid Reform when she meets with the press at 2:30pm.
Bermuda Real will be there and we’ll have a full report later this evening.
