Mexico’s Senate approves registry for parents who don’t pay child support. You will be banned from leaving the country

To solve the problem of parents not paying child support, Mexico will create a register and certificate required for a number of procedures.

Figure | © Marco Antonio Casique Reyes

Mexico’s Senate voted on March 22 to create a national registry of food obligations that keeps track of parents who don’t pay child support. Mexico will apply several restrictions on those included in the registry.

The General Law on the Rights of Girls, Boys and Young People, previously approved by the Chamber of Deputies, was passed unanimously by the Senate with 86 votes in favour. The President must now sign the law for it to be officially published and enforced.

The federal judiciary will provide the information to feed the database that tracks parents who fail to pay child support for their minor children. Only a family judge can remove someone from the register, and a number of procedures require a certificate of “non-admission” to the database.

Not having alimony is required to run for office in public elections and for magistrateship at the local and federal levels.

The certificate is required for all procedures related to driving licenses, passports, travel and identity documents such as their creation or renewal. In addition, any alimony debtor or person at risk of evading payment will be banned from leaving the country.

Failure to pay alimony should make it impossible to buy or sell real estate or proceeding before a notary. People cannot (re)marry if they are already unable to pay their alimony.

The President of the Commission on the Rights of Children and Young People, Senator Josefina Vázquez Mota, said minor children who do not receive child support often have to work and drop out of school, and tweeted: “No more impunity!” after the result of the vote.

For Senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, the law is “a huge step in protecting our girls, boys and teenagers.” The former interior minister under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador justified this by saying that the law meets the Mexican state’s obligations to ensure that the country’s children and young people are fed.

For Mayuli Latifa Martínez Simón, a conservative opposition National Action Party member, “It is alarming that children suffer from the indifference of parents who do not want to be responsible for basic expenses.”

According to Divorce Statistics from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), about half of divorces (48% in 2021) in Mexico involve child support.

According to the 2020 Population and Housing Census, nearly one in three Mexican mothers between the ages of 15 and 54 reported not living with a child’s father (10% were widowed, 9% were separated, 7% were single, and 3% were divorced ).

Mexican politicians and media regularly quote INEGI as saying that 67.5% of single mothers do not receive child support and 3 out of 4 children of separated parents do not receive child support (Newsendip could not confirm that INEGI actually published these statistics).

The parent has to pay the maintenance – and who does not pay – is almost always the father.

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