QMCSO

[Scott]

An employer has received several notices from the office of the Texas Attorney General-Child Support Division that the office of the Attorney General has obtained a child support order requiring employees of the employer to provide medical insurance to their children. In the notices, the AG office "requests" the employer to enroll the child in its health plan. The notices do not include a copy of the referenced child support order, however, and the notices themselves are not captioned as an "order" or "decree" of the AG office.

The employer has been taking the position that the notices do not constitute QMCSOs because they are not "judgments, decrees or orders" (under ERISA Section 609). Therefore, the employer has not been complying with the request in the notice to enroll the children. If the child support order were included, the employer would review it to determine if it were a QMCSO. Since nothing is included, however, the employer takes the position that there is no MCSO to review.

Is the employer correct in this position?

[Guest kclark]

Scott:

I am not sure the employer is correct in this situation. There is also a National Medical Support Notice that is also used in this type of situation.

These are usually used by District Attorney offices and do not need to come from a court. If the NMSN meets the substantive requirements of ERISA 609(a)(3), they must be treated as a QMCSO.

If they are basing their decision solely on the fact the notice did not come from a court, they would need to reconsider their decision.

We have received these before and sometimes they are simply in the form of a letter from the DA's office with an Application & Order for Health Insurance Coverage included.

Since the request came from the Attorney General's office, I would assume this was a similar correspondence?

Don't know if that helped, just thought I would share what we discovered!

Kathy

[Mary C]

Its my understanding that the standard National Medical Support Notice isn't due out till this fall. But the regs do say that the "request" can be issued by any governmental office, which we have interpreted to mean DA's office, Department of Human Services, Child Support Enforcement Bureau, etc. We get orders from all over the US and none of them are on a standard form or come from the same governmental department as yet. If all the required information is contained in the letter/request/order, then it should be considered a QMCSO.