Marilyn Ray Smith

Marilyn Ray Smith retired in 2010 from almost 24 years as chief legal counsel for the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, including seven years as Deputy Commissioner and IV-D Director, where she was responsible for overseeing the Commonwealth’s child support enforcement program. Since 1985, she has played a key role in drafting and implementing child support legislation at the state, federal and international levels. She testified on many occasions before the Massachusetts Legislature on child support legislative proposals initiated under her direction, as well as before the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee as Congress was drafting the child support provisions of federal welfare reform in 1995 and 2003. Marilyn also provided technical assistance as an official observer to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in drafting the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act and the revised Uniform Parentage Act. She was a member of several delegations of the U.S. Department of State and the National Child Support Enforcement Association to negotiate bilateral and multilateral reciprocal agreements for enforcement of child support and family maintenance orders across international borders, including The Hague Convention for the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, approved by the U.S. Senate in 2010.

Marilyn has authored numerous articles on child support enforcement, including “Child Support at Home and Abroad: Road to The Hague,” 43 Fam.L.Q. 37 (2009) as well as chapters on child support enforcement in Enforcing Child and Spousal Support (1995) and Massachusetts Divorce Law Practice (2008) and on paternity in Paternity and the Law of Parentage in Massachusetts (2009). For her work as an advocate for children, she received the Smith College Medal in 2003. Marilyn is on the boards of the Longy School of Music and the Brookline GreenSpace Alliance.

As an Access to Justice Fellow, Marilyn plans to work on strategies to expand urban agriculture opportunities, assisting the Urban Farming Institute of Boston and similar organizations in obtaining grants and in advocating for changes in laws and regulations to facilitate local commercial agriculture and food distribution. She hopes to complement the innovative work in this field started by 2012 Access to Justice Fellow Robert Tuchmann.