After woman writes complaint to Newsday –Judiciary: Yes, problems with maintenance payments

THE Judiciary has admitted to having problems in how quickly it can process and issue payments to people entitled to court-ordered child maintenance money.

The release, issued on Thursday under the hand of the Court Executive Administrator, came a day after Newsday published a letter from C.Thomas who had complained about the stress to have maintenance money sent to her bank account.

In the letter, on Page 13 under the headline, CourtPay system has me stressed, Ms Thomas wrote:

"Prior to the pandemic, payments were made directly to the courts. However, the CourtPay system is now the means by which we operate.

"When logging into the CourtPay portal, a notice pops up stating that three-four business days are required for the Judiciary to process payments and send them to the recipient’s bank.

"Processing used to take one day, but for several months now, payments have been taking eight-14 days to reach my bank account."

She said the Judiciary had said in its online notice that it was implementing a new system, "However, it has been over eight months of inefficiencies and delays."

She asked if the Judiciary was understaffed or lacking proper training in the department dealing with the processing of these payments.

She revealed having been waiting on a payment that was made on April 11. "As of April 24, nothing has been sent across to my bank. Every month I have to call and e-mail the Judiciary for money that is owed to my household. Having to run them down for child maintenance is frustrating and demeaning," she wrote.

In its release on Thursday, the Judiciary acknowledged the "great hardship" being experienced by some of its clients.

"We sincerely apologise and announce that we should finally be heading to an improved position as we will now be able again to have cash payments made to NLCB lotto booths, and this will allow for funds to be sent to our custodial bank account more quickly and therefore you will being to receive your monies more quickly."

The release said the Judiciary is also exploring another option to cause payouts to be faster "and we will reach out to you in about a month's time to address that."

The release also said calls by affected people have inundated its hotline staff and there were times even this option could have led to even more frustration when the hotlines would only give a busy tone.

The Judiciary pleaded for "your continued patience," as it assured that everything possible was being done to make the system more timely and efficient.