PRACTICE/MALPRACTICE ALERT: HEALTH COVERAGE IN SUPPORT ORDERS

Lawyers' Weekly USA has reported, in its usual sensationalized fashion, that there is yet another new way in which divorce lawyers can commit malpractice. How else, but by failing to include a crucial clause in support orders? Predictably, this is the result of an unnoticed new item of federal family law legislation.

Briefly, "Qualified Medical Child Support Order" (QMCSO) provisions will be of immense value to "divorced mothers," the Weekly's front-page lead story claims, by allowing custodial parents to force obligated ex-spouses' health insurance carriers to enroll the children, and deal directly with the custodial parent in matters of claims and reimbursement.

For the text of these changes see 42 USC §1396 g-1, which codifies PL 103-66, §13623(b) amending §1908 of the Social Security Act; and 29 USC §1169, codifying PL 103-66, §4301's amendment to §609 of ERISA. The effective date is August 10, 1993.

Obviously if this new amendment to ERISA and the Social Security Act works as intended, it should indeed eliminate some of the ugliest child support problems by keeping the payor parent from being able to pocket the reimbursement money after the custodial parent has paid the medical bills and submitted a claim.

The legislation's other benefit is preventing a payor parent's insurance carrier from refusing to enroll the child on grounds that the child does not live with that parent, is not claimed as a dependent by him, lives outside the plan's service area, or is illegitimate. Predictably, the new federal statute requires states to enact laws by April 1 of 1994, and it allows the custodial parent (which the Weekly consistently labels "mother"), to reap these benefits if the child support decree includes the magic words necessary to be deemed a QMCSO.

Supposedly the requirements are the names and addresses of the noncustodial parent and covered child, period to which the order applies, health plans to which the order applies, and reasonable description of the type of coverage (e.g., medical, dental, orthodontic). While the newspaper story quotes one family law expert from New Jersey as saying that this means no more than "a single short paragraph," the Weekly's January 17 issue includes a QMCSO form that is 54 lines long and takes up 72 column inches of newspaper page.