In the view of Marilyn Ray Smith, children should never be victims of their parents’ decision to divorce or stay single. She has dedicated most of her professional life to ensuring the financial well-being of children in single-parent families. As former Deputy Commissioner and current Chief Legal Counsel for the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Marilyn has been passionately committed to ensuring that children have the financial support of their parents, including guaranteeing that children born to unwed parents have the same rights as children born to married parents. During her tenure, more than $7 billion in child support has been collected for Massachusetts children

She was a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Commission on Child Support Enforcement in 1985, which emphasized the needs of the child in setting child support awards, ensured consistency in child support orders across the state and helped lessen the negative effects on the child’s standard of living resulting from family separation. She also drafted and helped secure passage of comprehensive child support reform legislation in Massachusetts, streamlining the process for establishing paternity and making maximum use of automation to seize income and assets of parents delinquent in paying child support. This legislation has served as a model for other states, as well as for Congress in 1996 as it enacted the child support provisions that were part of federal welfare reform.

From 1997 to 2002, she was executive director of the Governor’s Commission on Responsible Fatherhood and Family Support, where she sponsored initiatives to work with incarcerated and low–income fathers. Marilyn has testified on child support issues before the Massachusetts legislature as well as the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, with many of her recommendations incorporated into congressional mandates. She has served as a Board member and President of the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA). She also has been a member of several delegations of the U.S. Department of State to negotiate bilateral and multilateral reciprocal agreements for enforcement of support orders across international borders, including The Hague Conference on Private International Law and fifteen European countries. She is the author of numerous published articles on child support enforcement and the child support chapter in Enforcing Child and Spousal Support (Chicago, 1995).

Marilyn has a law degree from Northeastern University School Law and a master’s degree from Brandeis University in the History of American Civilization. She is married to Charles Freifeld, an investment manager and mathematician, and has three sons and three grandchildren, with another one on the way. Passions other than child support enforcement include playing the piano, gardening, biking, and hiking.