Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [95]
The state has great resources and can be an enormous help to you. At the same time, they're working with a lot of cases, so be patient and don't expect immediate results.
If You're the Recipient: Enforcing Child Support Orders
Getting a child support order from the court isn't that difficult it's getting your payments regularly that can be hard. You may be worried about getting your support checks because your spouse is self-employed or has a sporadic income stream, or because you simply don't consider your spouse trustworthy. And you're probably not off base in being concerned-millions of dollars in child support goes uncollected every year.
State Child Support Enforcement Agencies
State Child Support Enforcement Agencies (continued)
While Your Divorce Is Pending
If your divorce is not yet completed and you haven't been to court yet, you may have an informal agreement with your spouse about support while your divorce is pending. You may even have written it down. However, you can't enforce that agreement until you go to court and get an order from a judge making it official. So if your spouse has stopped paying for necessary expenses, you'll have to go into court right away for a temporary order. See Chapter 5.
If you're in a mediation process, you should immediately report to the mediator-and your consulting lawyer, if you have one-that your spouse isn't making good on your agreement. The mediator may have you and your spouse come in for another session, at which you can find out the reason for the nonpayment and discuss how to protect your children's right to support. Your own lawyer may need to get involved at some point.
Once You Have a Court Order
Once you have a court order, whether your divorce is final or not, you can enforce the support order if your support check doesn't arrive. If you arranged for payment to be made through a wage garnishment or through your state child support enforcement agency (or both), you have automatic enforcement help from either the employer or the agency. If your agreement is for direct payment from your spouse to you, you have more to do.
If you have (or had) a lawyer, immediately tell your lawyer that there's a problem with the support. Most likely, the first thing the lawyer will do is write to your spouse or to his or her lawyer. If that doesn't work, a wage garnishment is probably your next best step.
If You're the Paying Spouse
Sometimes it may feel as though you are paying out practically your whole paycheck and going without, while your spouse is living comfortably with the kids in the house that used to be your home too. Try to keep some perspective on the situation. When you lived with your spouse and kids, you probably put most of your money into the household kitty, and a lot of that contribution was about providing a house, clothes, and food for your children. The same is true now.
If you really can't pay what you owe, or your situation changes, you'll need to ask the court to have your support amount modified. (See "If Circumstances Change," below.) Whatever you do, don't just stop paying. Failure to pay court-ordered child support is a crime. That means that under certain circumstances, a warrant could he issued for your arrest and you could be put in jail for up to six months for a first offense, and two years for a repeat arrearage. But there are a lot of possibilities short of that that could make your life pretty miserable. State agencies have the power to dip into your bank account-even if you own it jointly with someone else (like a new spouse). Many states can suspend your professional license and your driver's license if you have serious support arrearages.
Don't Try Playing Dead
One divorced father was arrested and put in jail for failure to pay about $4,000 in child support. He escaped,