<prompt> Human: My husband and I got married and had a baby. He is divorced and due to an injury has fallen behind in child support payments. I am the only one working right now and with the income disparity between us it makes more sense for him to be a stay at home parent while I work and pay his child support payments. With tax time approaching, Im unsure of how to proceed. Will the irs take my return to cover his back child support if I file jointly? Should we file married but separately? I cant find anything how this would impact us in this situation. We are in Alaska for reference.Assistant: IRS employee here:You can contact the Bureau of the Fiscal Service BFS at 1-800-304-3107 and check if your spouse has a Federal Debt Indicator. BFS is the branch of the Treasury then handles non-IRS offsets for child support, state tax agencies, and student loan collections. The BFS number has automated and live customer service.Most big-name software products online or off-the-shelf or a competent tax professional will allow you to run your facts and figures both ways: Married Filing Joint MFJ or Married Filing Seperate MFS. MFJ generally results in the most favorable tax liability, because many tax benefits are reduced or disqualified for MFS Taxpayers.The Injured Spouse Allocation on Form 8379 may reduce or prevent an offset to a debt owed by one spouse if you file MFJ. The allocation can be filed electronically or by mail.Assuming you e-file for 2014 and include the Form 8379, the normal processing timeframe is extended from three weeks to eleven weeks. During that timeframe, your refund is frozen on your 2014 tax account. The allocation is assigned to a technician to work, and they are generally finished in first-in-first-out order.Injured Spouse allocations are one of the few areas of federal tax law that also follow state law. Your refund could be all of the overpayment, or none, or something in the middle.During this 77 days timeframe, you can monitor the refund progress at irs.gov Wheres My Refund? tool. The resposne, however, will indicate a delayed status until the allocation is processed. As soon as the determination is made, the allocated refund is issued, and the portion, if any, that is not allocated is made available to offset to the non-tax debt.If an offset occurs, you will receive a notice from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service explaining the offset amount.If it goes past 77 days and you dont receive your allocated refund, or a letter asking for more time, or the offset notice, please call 1-800-829-1040 M - F 7am - 7pm and speak with a representative. They will research your account, and provide you with an updated status.Thank you for reading.Human: Wow that was very thorough, thank you. I will start with BFS.Edit: my husband was only out part of the year for a knee injury but it was enough to set him back, is there a time minimum for the injured spouse form?  <response>: You are the injured spouse in this equation. If the joint refund is offset to a debt for which you are not liable, you are injured. 