Does Child Support Keep Running While I'm in Jail in Washington?

For decades, parents left jail owing tens of thousands in child support that accumulated while they earned pennies an hour, debt that followed them for life and helped push many right back inside. Washington changed the rules. The Law Office of Chad Foster helps Snohomish County clients with divorce and family-law matters.

Since 2021, Washington abates child support during significant incarceration. Under RCW 26.09.320, if you are confined in a jail, prison, or correctional facility for at least six months, or serving a sentence greater than six months, your child support obligation is abated to ten dollars per month, no matter how many children the order covers. The law presumes an incarcerated parent cannot pay, and after release, support ramps back up in stages rather than all at once. Here is how the abatement works, its limits, and what to do on both sides of it.

The Old Problem the Statute Solved

Child support orders do not pause themselves. Before the abatement law, an order for several hundred dollars a month kept charging through a multi-year sentence, and unpaid support became a judgment-like debt with interest. A parent could emerge from a three-year sentence owing $20,000 or more, with a suspended driver's license and garnishment waiting, hardly the launchpad for steady employment and consistent parenting. Washington courts had already recognized in In re Marriage of Blickenstaff, 71 Wn. App. 489 (1993), that an incarcerated parent is not voluntarily unemployed, and federal child support regulations now forbid states from treating incarceration as voluntary unemployment (45 C.F.R. 302.56(c)(3)). The legislature repeated that principle in the findings it attached to the 2020 abatement law, printed as a note to RCW 26.09.320, and wrote the practical consequence into the statute itself: a rebuttable presumption that an incarcerated parent cannot pay. For related guidance, see Do I Have to Support My Stepchildren in Washington.

That matters because support calculations can impute income to parents who are voluntarily unemployed. Together, those rules take imputation off the table for parents whose unemployment consists of being locked up, and RCW 26.19.071 now directs courts weighing imputation to consider a parent's criminal record and other employment barriers. For related guidance, see How is spousal support calculated in WA.

How the Abatement Works

The mechanics are deliberately simple. When a parent owing support is confined for at least six months, or is serving a sentence greater than six months, the support obligation under the order is abated to ten dollars per month, regardless of the number of children. The statute creates a rebuttable presumption that an incarcerated person is unable to pay child support, and if the order contains the standard abatement language that orders entered since February 2021 generally include, the abatement applies without the incarcerated parent filing a motion, a critical feature for people with no lawyer and no law library access. Older orders without that language must first be modified to add it; under RCW 26.09.335, the Division of Child Support must refer the case for that determination once it learns of a qualifying confinement, and either parent can also ask for it under RCW 26.09.170.

The presumption can be rebutted. The parent receiving support, or the state's Division of Child Support, can defeat the abatement by demonstrating that the incarcerated parent has possession of, or access to, income or assets available to provide support while incarcerated. The parent with rental income, a business still generating profit, or significant savings does not get the ten-dollar rate just for being confined. The abatement is about inability to pay, not a reward for incarceration.

Short stays do not qualify. A parent jailed for thirty days still owes the full monthly amount, and the support that accrued before confinement does not disappear. Abatement is forward-looking relief for lengthy confinement, not an eraser for existing arrears, which remain collectible, a topic covered from the enforcement side in can you go to jail for not paying child support in Washington.

The Ramp Back After Release

The statute's second insight is that release day is not payday. A parent walking out of prison needs time to find work before a full support obligation lands. So reinstatement happens in stages: beginning the first day of the fourth month after release, the obligation automatically resumes at fifty percent of the ordered amount, but not below the presumptive minimum of fifty dollars per month per child, and one year after release, it returns automatically to one hundred percent of the amount in the underlying order.

No motion is needed for any of it, but the transition period is exactly the right moment to ask whether the old order still fits. If your post-release earning capacity is genuinely different from the income the order was based on, a modification petition can align the number with reality before full reinstatement arrives, and if you are receiving support, the same window is when to evaluate whether the paying parent's circumstances justify more than the automatic schedule provides.

What Both Parents Should Know

If you are the incarcerated parent or heading to confinement: confirm the Division of Child Support and the court know about the incarceration, because support the agency collected before it was notified is not refunded, keep proof of your confinement dates, and do not assume every obligation vanished, since the ten-dollar monthly amount and any arrears remain yours. If you owe support under orders from other states, abatement rules may differ, and which state can change an order is its own question, answered in which state can change my child support order after a move.

If you are the parent receiving support: the abatement is presumptive, not absolute. If the other parent has assets or income behind the walls, gather the evidence and challenge the presumption. And watch the calendar after release, because the automatic fifty percent and one-hundred percent reinstatement dates are when payments should resume without you filing anything.

Arrears From Before the Law Changed

A hard question arrives in many of these cases: what about the debt that piled up under the old rules, or during a confinement the abatement did not cover? The abatement operates prospectively; it does not forgive support that lawfully accrued before it applied. That said, the ledger is not always hopeless. Payment records deserve auditing, since years of enforcement can accumulate errors. Interest and collection posture can sometimes be negotiated with the Division of Child Support, particularly where a realistic payment plan replaces an uncollectible balance. And where the original order was built on imputed income that never matched reality, the modification rules offer at least a forward-looking fix. Parents coming home to five-figure arrears do best by confronting the number early, with documentation, rather than letting license suspensions and garnishments dictate the terms.

Get the Order Matched to Reality

Whether you are facing incarceration with a support order running, coming home to a reinstatement schedule, or receiving support from a parent whose confinement changed everything, the right move is to deal with the order directly rather than letting debt and default judgments accumulate. The Law Office of Chad Foster helps parents on both sides of support cases in Snohomish County get orders that match real circumstances. Call 425.785.8679 to talk through your situation.