This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 THE HAGUE 001558 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR L/PIL - KOVAR, L/T - DALTON, L/EUR - BLOOM 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KJUS KOCI HCOPIL CASC CJAN
SUBJECT: HCOPIL - SECOND MEETING OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION 
OF THE HAGUE CONFERENCE ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW ON THE 
INTERNATIONAL RECOVERY OF CHILD SUPPORT AND OTHER FORMS OF 
FAMILY MAINTENANCE 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY:  The second meeting of the Special Commission of 
the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCOPIL) on 
the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms 
of Family Maintenance took place June 7-June 18, 2004. 
Building on the work of the first meeting of the Special 
Commission in May 2003 and of the drafting committee formed 
at that time, the second session of the Special Commission 
made considerable progress.   In particular, the European 
Commission showed significantly more flexibility this year 
than last on the key issues of jurisdiction and scope.  The 
report of the last year,s activities of the informal 
U.S.-led Administrative Cooperation Working Group (ACWG) was 
well-received, and the Special Commission gave the ACWG a 
mandate to continue its work as a formal group.  U.S. Office 
of Child Support Commissioner Sherri Z. Heller,s presence at 
part of the meeting was welcomed by the members of the 
Special Commission as a tangible sign of U.S. support for 
international child support.  Commissioner Heller stressed 
that the U.S. was interested in a practical convention that 
will produce results.  The Permanent Bureau anticipates that 
this project will be concluded in 2006.  U.S, delegation  is 
cautiously optimistic that the final result will be an 
instrument that meets U.S. legal and policy concerns.  End 
summary. 
 
¶2.  U.S. PARTICIPANTS: 
 
Dr. Sherri Heller, Commissioner, Office of Child Support 
Enforcement, Administration of Children and Families, 
Department of Health and Human Services was the senior U.S. 
official on the U.S. delegation.  The delegation included 
Mary Helen Carlson, (L/PIL), Monica Gaw (CA/OCS/PRI), 
Elizabeth Matheson (HHS/ACF/OCSE), Robert Keith (Children, 
Families and Aging Division, HHS), Mary Dahlberg, Deputy 
Attorney General, California; Margaret Haynes, Director, 
State and Local Government, Tier Technologies, Inc; 
Profession John J. Sampson, University of Texas School of 
Law, and Mariana Silveira, National Law Center for 
Inter-American Free Trade.  In addition NGOs from the United 
States participating in the Special Commission included the 
National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA) 
represented by Margot Bean, Deputy Commissioner and Director, 
CSE, New York Division of Child Support Enforcement; Ms. 
Sandra Kay Farley, Director, Government Relations Office, 
National Center for State Courts, Alisha Griffin, Assistant 
Director, Child Support, New Jersey Department of Health and 
Human Services, Elana L. Hatch, Chief Deputy District 
Attorney, Clark County, Family Support Division, Las Vegas, 
Nevada and Marilyn Ray Smith, IV-D Director, Child Support 
Enforcement, Boston, Massachusetts; and from the 
International Bar Association, Gloria De Hart and Gary 
Caswell. 
 
¶3.  PARTICIPATION OF DR. SHERRI  Z. HELLER, COMMISSIONER OF 
THE UNITED STATES OFFICE OF CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT, IN THE 
SPECIAL COMMISSION 
 
Dr. Sherri Heller, Commissioner, Office of Child Support 
Enforcement, Administration of Children and Families, U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services,  actively 
participated in the first two days of the Special Commission, 
during which the need for and extent of administrative 
cooperation among countries was debated.  Commissioner Heller 
stressed the two principles guiding the U.S. approach to a 
multilateral child support convention:  parental 
responsibility and better tangible results for children.  She 
stated that those results should ensure financial security 
for children and families, independent of government 
largesse.  She stressed the commitment of government 
resources necessary to shift financial responsibility from 
states to families and to promote healthy and stable 
families.  She praised the work of the ACWG coordinated and 
financially supported by the United States, as reflecting 
thoughtful deliberation and consideration of practical and 
flexible approaches essential to the success of a new 
convention.  The ACWG,s work, and the Special Commission,s 
efforts to date, show encouraging signs for the convention to 
produce concrete results in the form of more reliable support 
for children. 
 
During Commissioner Heller,s participation, she expressed 
the need to provide necessary assistance to both creditors 
and debtors, to include recoupment of state welfare 
expenditures while maximizing support flowing directly to 
families and to recognize that within the United States, 
child support is an exception to the general rule that family 
law is generally a matter of individual state, rather than 
federal, law. 
 
The Hague Conference Permanent Bureau hosted a luncheon in 
Dr. Heller,s honor, attended by His Excellency Fausto Pocar, 
the Chairman of the Special  Commission. 
 
¶4.  NCSEA RECEPTION 
 
For the second year,  the National Child Support Enforcement 
Association sponsored a reception attended by most delegates. 
 This year it was held in the garden at the residence of the 
Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy, Daniel R. 
Russel. 
 
¶5.  PARTICIPANTS 
 
Approximately 50 countries participated, which was about 10 
more than last year.  The increased participation of Latin 
American  countries was welcome. (The U.S. deserves some 
credit for this, as the new convention was a focus of the 
U.S.-sponsored Meeting of the Americas on International Child 
Support held in August 2003.  The U.S. was also one of the 
countries that funded Spanish interpretation and 
translation.)  In addition, broader geographic participation 
included the Asian and Pacific countries of China, Korea, 
Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, African nations of South 
Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe and from the Near East and South 
Asia: Egypt, Israel and Pakistan. 
 
6..  REPORTS ON ACTIVITIES OF THE MAY 2003 SPECIAL COMMISSION 
WORKING GROUPS: 
 
In the intervening twelve months since the meeting of the 
First Special Commission, the informal working groups and the 
Permanent Bureau of the HCOPIL were hard at work moving the 
Special Commission,s agenda forward.  The drafting committee 
prepared a preliminary draft agreement for consideration. 
The U.S.-led informal Administrative Cooperation Working 
Group (and its subcommittees: Country Profile Committee, 
Forms Committee, and Timelines Committee) and the formal 
Applicable Law working group reported on their efforts and 
introduced preliminary documents for consideration.  (The 
informal jurisdiction working group did not present a 
substantive report.)  The Applicable Law group, headed by 
Switzerland, made a proposal to include optional rules on 
applicable law.  No decision was made on this proposal, but 
it was progress that no one is now arguing for mandatory 
applicable law rules, which would be unacceptable to the U.S. 
 The Special Commission asked the ACWG to continue as a 
formal group with a mandate to continue consideration of 
forms of administrative cooperation in the context of this 
negotiation. The U.S. suggested that additional countries 
join the U.S. in coordinating the activities of the ACWG, and 
it was agreed that the coordinating committee will consist of 
Australia, Costa Rica, Hungary and the U.S. 
 
¶7.  ROLE  OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION 
 
Antoine Buchet has replaced Marie-Odile Baur as the 
Commission,s spokesperson at the Special Commission.  Both 
during the Special Commission and during bilateral meetings 
with the U.S., Mr. Buchet was friendly, eager to discuss 
possible compromises, and relatively flexible.  In 
particular, the Commission is no longer arguing for mandatory 
rules of jurisdiction that would prevent the U.S. from 
joining the convention. 
 
¶8.  ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO THE U.S. 
 
SCOPE OF THE CONVENTION:  While all experts agreed that the 
first focus of the convention should be child support 
enforcement, a majority of experts also favored extension of 
administrative and judicial remedies to spousal support, and 
some favored extending it to other forms of family support. 
It was clear that not all countries were prepared to dedicate 
resources to forms of family support other than child 
support.  Experts determined that some form of reservation 
allowing states not to apply the convention to support 
obligations other than those owed to children (and possibly 
spouses) will be necessary. 
 
FUNCTIONS OF CENTRAL AUTHORITIES/TYPES OF REQUESTS COVERED: 
The U.S. is one of  a number of countries for whom strong 
provisions on administrative cooperation are the most 
important elements of this convention.  There was much debate 
over the nature and extent of the Central Authority,s 
responsibilities.  The U.S. strongly urged that the 
convention should apply to a broad range of requests for 
services, including requests for establishment of a new 
order, establishment of paternity, recognition and 
enforcement of orders, modification of orders and limited 
assistance requests (such as a request to locate a debtor or 
assets).  While some countries do not want to include 
paternity establishment or requests for limited services as 
obligations of the Central Authority, for the most part there 
was a consensus that the convention should cover all of the 
types of requests just listed. 
 
COSTS:  It was readily agreed that Central Authorities should 
not charge for administrative services provided to other 
Central Authorities.  However, there was no agreement on 
whether all services, including legal services if necessary, 
must be provided to the applicant free of charge.  This is a 
fundamental principle for the U.S., as the legal right to 
collect child support in an international case is an empty 
right if the applicant has to retain a lawyer in a foreign 
country.  Many countries, including both developed and 
developing nations, do provide free legal services in child 
support cases.  But some (including France and Spain) apply a 
means test that is so low that virtually no U.S. applicant, 
including those below the U.S. poverty line, qualifies for 
free services.  The U.S. made it clear that a country must 
provide our applicants effective access to the procedures 
available under the Convention, including by providing free 
legal services if necessary.  This may be the most  difficult 
issue to resolve. 
 
BASES FOR RECOGNITION:   We had feared that this issue would 
be contentious, with some states arguing that "habitual 
residence of the child" must be a mandatory ground of 
jurisdiction despite the fact that this is inconsistent with 
U.S. due process requirements and would prevent the U.S. from 
becoming a party to the convention.  However, a compromise 
was achieved relatively quickly, most likely because the 
members of the European Union agreed that a major reason to 
negotiate a new child support convention was to produce a 
convention the U.S. would join.  The compromise is that the 
convention will include a list of bases on which one state 
will recognize and enforce a decision of another state.  The 
list will include "habitual residence of the child" as well 
as the U.S. fact-based ground; states will be able to make a 
reservation with respect to the "habitual residence of the 
child." 
 
 TRANSMISSION, RECEIPT AND PROCESSING OF APPLICATIONS AND 
CASES:    There was general consensus that all applications 
should be made to the central authority in the requesting 
state for services of the central authority in the requested 
state.   In other words, a foreign applicant cannot apply 
directly to the Central Authority of another state, but 
instead must work through her own Central Authority.  This 
should provide some level of quality control over the 
applications. 
 
MODIFICATION:  There was general consensus that modification 
of a support order should be made by the original forum in 
the original state of issuance.  If the creditor and debtor 
have all left the original jurisdiction, and information 
about change of circumstances is needed, the new jurisdiction 
should confer with the original jurisdiction. 
 
ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER:  A review of pilot projects and 
developing technologies for electronic funds transfer was 
conducted.  This included New Zealand/Australia practices and 
U.S./Canada exchanges.  Recognizing that the new Convention 
will be a modern, future directed instrument, all countries, 
with widely varying resources embraced these developments 
with a view toward getting funds to children as quickly and 
inexpensively as possible.  The Permanent Bureau presented a 
paper on developments in electronic funds transfer. 
 
¶9.  CONCLUSION 
 
The Drafting Committee (which includes two members of the 
U.S. delegation) will meet in October to continue work on the 
draft convention.  The next plenary session of the Special 
Commission will take place in May or June 2005.  There will 
need to be one (or possibly two) more Special Commissions 
before a final Diplomatic 
Conference is held.  The Permanent Bureau believes that 
concluding the draft instrument by the end of 2006 is a 
realistic goal. 
SOBEL