How to Get Rid of Child Support Interest in Wisconsin

There is no clean way to get rid of child support interest in Wisconsin. A Wisconsin court cannot waive or forgive interest that has already accrued on your arrears, and no private agreement with the other parent will erase it either. What you can do is stop new interest from piling up, contain the enforcement actions that come with unpaid support, and pay the balance down knowing that the state is already charging a reduced rate.

Why a Judge Can’t Erase the Interest

Wisconsin Statute 767.511(6) says interest on unpaid child support “shall” be charged. That word matters. In Douglas County Child Support Enforcement Unit v. Fisher, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that a trial court has no discretion to decline to impose interest on arrears, even when the court itself finds that charging interest would be inequitable.¹

So a hardship motion asking a judge to wipe out accrued interest is a dead end. A sympathetic judge still lacks the legal authority to grant it. You’ll pay filing fees and receive a denial.

The Rate You’re Actually Being Charged

The statutory rate is 1% per month, or 12% annually, on unpaid support. Subsection (6m) of the same statute authorized the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to run a pilot program at a reduced rate of 0.5% per month, and the department has implemented it. The current rate charged on past-due support is 0.5% per month, or 6% per year.²

Interest begins accruing when your past-due balance equals or exceeds one month’s court-ordered support. If your current support obligation has ended but you still owe arrears, interest accrues on the entire unpaid balance.¹

You Also Can’t Retroactively Reduce the Arrears Themselves

People sometimes hope that if the underlying arrears go away, the interest on them will too. Wisconsin law blocks that route. A court cannot revise child support amounts or arrears that accrued before the other party was served with a modification request, except to correct a mathematical error in the original calculation.³ In State v. Jeffrie C.B., the Court of Appeals reversed a trial court that had retroactively reduced arrears to what the support amount “should have been,” holding that revisiting a policy choice is not the same as fixing a math error.

If your income dropped six months ago and you never filed a modification, the arrears from those six months are locked in, and the interest on them keeps running.

Stop New Interest by Modifying Current Support

The most useful thing you can do today is file to modify your current support order if your circumstances have changed substantially. A job loss, a significant income drop, a disability, or incarceration can all justify a modification. Every month the current order stays too high is another month of new arrears and new interest that no court can later undo.

The modification is filed on a Notice of Motion and Motion to Change, court form FA-4170V. You must serve a copy on every other party, including the child support agency. Service by mail must be completed at least eight business days before the hearing; personal service requires at least five business days. A Financial Disclosure Statement or Income and Expense Statement supporting the change goes in with the motion.⁴

The new support amount takes effect only from the date the other party is served, not from the date your circumstances changed. File as soon as your situation changes.

Get on a Payment Plan Through Your County Agency

A payment plan negotiated through your county child support agency won’t erase interest, but it pauses several of the enforcement actions that make life difficult while you pay the balance down. If you stay on the plan, the agency pauses:

Actions to suspend or deny your driver’s license, recreational licenses, and professional licenses
Actions to seize your checking, savings, IRAs, and mutual fund accounts
Actions to seize titled property such as your home or car

A payment plan won’t do everything. It won’t remove a child support lien from your record (only paying off the full past-due amount does that), stop tax refund interception, prevent passport denial, or stop interception of lump-sum payments from a public retirement fund.²

Some Wisconsin counties have also run debt-reduction pilots that forgive a portion of arrears for every dollar of current support paid and suspend interest during participation. Ask your local agency whether anything like that is currently available where you live.

How Your Payments Are Applied

Wisconsin law sets a fixed priority for how each payment is credited:¹

First, the current month’s support obligation
Second, unpaid support from prior months (the principal arrears)
Third, accrued interest

Interest sits at the bottom. Every dollar goes to current support and then to principal arrears before touching interest. Two practical consequences follow. Staying current on your monthly obligation is the single most effective thing you can do, because it prevents any new arrears from generating interest at all. And any extra money you can put in above the current month reduces the principal balance, which in turn shrinks the base that future interest is calculated on.

Things That Won’t Work

A private agreement with the other parent to waive the interest is not a solution. Wisconsin courts have held that stipulations waiving or capping child support are against public policy and unenforceable.¹ Interest under 767.511(6) is paid to the Department of Children and Families or its designee rather than directly to the other parent, and the department isn’t bound by informal deals between the two of you.

Bankruptcy won’t discharge it either. Domestic support obligations are excluded from discharge under both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.⁵ Interest on child support arrears is treated as part of that obligation. Bankruptcy might restructure other debts and free up cash you can put toward support, but it will not touch the support balance itself.

What Ignoring the Balance Costs

Doing nothing is the worst option. Interest keeps accruing, and Wisconsin’s enforcement tools are aggressive. Your child support agency can intercept state and federal tax refunds, place liens on your property, seize bank accounts, suspend your driver’s license and professional licenses, and report the debt to credit agencies. If you owe more than $2,500, the federal government can deny your passport application.² Even a modest payment plan demonstrates good faith and pauses several of those actions.

A Realistic Plan to Bring the Balance Down

Pay the current month in full every month. This alone stops the arrears from growing and stops new interest from being generated.
File a modification the moment your income changes. Support cannot be lowered for any period before the other party is served.
Set up a formal payment plan with your county child support agency to pause license, bank, and property enforcement while you pay.
Put anything extra toward the balance. Once current support and principal arrears are covered, additional payments reach the interest and shrink the base for future interest.
Ask the county agency whether a local debt-reduction or interest-suspension pilot is running.

The state has already lowered the rate to half of the statutory 1% per month. Combined with a support order that matches your actual income and consistent payments toward the balance, that reduced rate is the realistic path to a debt that gets smaller instead of larger.

1
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 767.511 – Child Support
2
Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Child Support Enforcement Collection Methods
3
Wisconsin Court System. State v Jeffrie CB
4
Wisconsin Court System. Notice of Motion and Motion to Change
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 523 – Exceptions to Discharge