Michigan Suspends Driver's Licenses Without Confirming Courts Held Required Hearings

The Michigan Secretary of State has been suspending driver's licenses based on Friend of the Court orders without any mechanism to confirm that the courts conducted the ability to pay hearings required by state law and the United States Supreme Court.

The enforcement pipeline works like this. A county FOC office sends a suspension notice. The Secretary of State processes it immediately. The parent loses their license. At no point does anyone verify that the court made a finding that the parent had the ability to pay and willfully refused. The law requires that finding. The system does not check for it.

The Law Changed. The Process Did Not.

In October 2021, Michigan amended MCL 552.628 to require two conditions before a license can be suspended for child support arrears. First, the court must determine through an ability to pay assessment that the payer is willfully not making payments despite having the financial means to do so. Second, the FOC must determine that no other enforcement sanction would ensure compliance.

Before this amendment, a parent who fell two months behind could face automatic suspension with no judicial review of their financial situation. The 2021 law was supposed to end that.

But MCL 257.321c still says the Secretary of State "shall immediately suspend" the license when notified by the FOC. The statute uses mandatory language. It contains no requirement for the Secretary of State to verify that the underlying order included an ability to pay determination. The office simply processes what it receives.

This means that if a county FOC submits a suspension notice based on a proceeding where no ability to pay hearing was held, the Secretary of State would process it the same as a lawful order. There is no filter. There is no audit. There is no second check.

The Supreme Court Already Ruled on This

In Turner v. Rogers (2011), the United States Supreme Court held that due process requires specific safeguards before a parent can be penalized for nonpayment of child support. The Court laid out four requirements: notice that ability to pay is a critical issue, a form to collect financial information, an opportunity for the parent to respond, and an express finding by the court that the parent has the ability to pay.

In 2016, the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement issued a Final Rule directing all states to consider a parent's ability to pay before pursuing enforcement actions including license suspensions, contempt proceedings, and incarceration. The rule was issued because the federal government found that punitive enforcement against parents who cannot pay does not increase collections. It decreases them.

The Research Says Suspensions Make the Problem Worse

A 2019 pilot study conducted by Minnesota's Management and Budget office found that driver's license suspensions produced a four percentage point reduction in payment compliance during the first six months. Parents who lost their licenses paid less, not more.

The University of Wisconsin found that suspensions disproportionately hit parents in areas without public transportation, trapping them in a cycle where they lose their license, lose their job, fall further behind on payments, and become even less able to pay what they owe.

The Congressional Research Service reported that because wage withholding is the single most effective child support collection tool, any enforcement action that interferes with employment is "almost certainly hurting rather than encouraging enforcement."

Michigan's own child support collection rates have declined in multiple counties over the past five years. Kalamazoo County's 9th Circuit FOC has seen year over year drops since 2020.

83 Counties. Zero Oversight.

Michigan has 83 counties, each operating its own Friend of the Court office. The State Court Administrative Office's FOC Bureau oversees these offices from Lansing but has faced its own scrutiny. An investigation by The Kalamazoo Press found that the Kalamazoo County FOC denied 100 percent of grievances filed over a five year period under the watch of FOC Bureau Director Steven D. Capps.

If a county FOC is already failing to uphold its grievance process, the question becomes whether that same office can be trusted to conduct proper ability to pay hearings before requesting license suspensions. And if it cannot, the Secretary of State is executing potentially unlawful orders with no way to know the difference.

Comment Requested

Michigan Capitol has requested comment from the Secretary of State's office on whether the agency verifies that ability to pay hearings were conducted before processing FOC suspension orders.