Stimulus Check Intercepted for Child Support? We Have Good News for You.

By Dachan Furnace, Esquire

Did your Stimulus check get intercepted to pay your spouse’s back child support? You may have been one of the millions of Americans expecting a stimulus check, but instead received a Notice of Offset from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). If that’s your reality, we have good news! The IRS will begin to send out what they call “catch-up” payments to all eligible spouses whose stimulus check was applied to their spouse’s child support arrears.

Taxpayers should expect to receive this payment around mid-September if they filed Form 8379-Injured Spouse Allocation with their federal income tax return. This form is usually filed when the injured spouse on a jointly filed tax return files to get back their share of the joint refund when the joint refund is applied to a past-due obligation of the other spouse. This form is not only used instances where the past due obligation is from child support arrears, it can be used for any legally enforceable past-due debts such as federal tax debt, state income tax debt, state unemployment compensation debt or a federal nontax debt, such as student loan debt.

If you did not file Form 8379 this year with your return, there is no need to worry. The IRS will automatically send the EIP payment at a later date. There is no need to do anything further.

To check the status of this payment visit https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment. This status is updated every 24 hours. If you have any further questions about your rights as an injured spouse or how to file Form 8379, call Fiffik Law Group, at (412) 391-1014.