Advice please about Child Support
Some of you that have read my blogs know that BM decided last year from January to August she would leave FSS with my fiancee and rarely visted him but still collected the child support not even offering to help out fiancee with food, bills, child care, everything....is there some type of legal action we can take against her? The divorce was 50/50 at the time and fiancee made more so he had to pay her..they had a verbal agreement (which she admitted to in her affidavit) stating that fiancee would have FSS all of the time...but SHE collected the support payments...does anyone know if this is a contempt issue or fraud, or is it a civil matter now for small claims court? I asked my own CS worker and she can't ive any legal advice but she said to NEVER go with verbal agreements, someone always gets screwed...if ANYONE has any advice I'd like to hear it, I'm about to write to the newspapers about how sexist the courts are here...any advice is appreciated..I want my hubby to get his 3 grand back from the greedy woman!
What is the situation now?
We could only collect back what we paid AFTER she conceded custody in writing.
The last few months of the case SD was with us 3-4 weeks at a time and BM and SD were choosing not to see each other because BM was so angry with her for talking to GAL and counselor about her. But our attorney said no to getting any of that back. DH was upset, but my eye was on the bigger picture of not having to pay anymore and BM having to pay. That was an 865 bucks swing for us each month. Big loss for her. We were paying for so much anyway, plus the court costs that we still haven't caught up almost a year later.
I think for you to have changed that you would have had to move on that while it was going on. It's tough, because as soon as the BM's think they'll be losing money, they will all of a sudden jump back in to see their children.
Oh- and I wrote something on another post about my niece who went to her deadbeat mom's (H's sister)for several months. SIL kept claiming she would take her exH back to court for custody to stop CS payments. Well she was so far behind that they wouldn't have stopped them anyway. When we had my niece for a few weeks last summer, we took her dad (exBIL) to dinner for driving the full six hours to get her. He told us that DH's SIL kept telling him how unfair it was that she was having to pay while he didn't have their daughter. BUT...he told us those payments were 90 percent back CS anyway. And he also knew that the arrangement would not last. SIL didn't have niece for visitation for over two years before this. So he said, "I'm just looking at this as an extended visit there to make up for all the ones she never bothered to take.
In his case I think he was justified.
In yours? Unfortunately I don't think the money you'll pay to take her to court for it will be worth what you'll get back. IF you get it back. And if not, you'll be out a thousand or so more at the least. If she's back in the picture that's all the judges seem to worry about. PLUS...here's an important thing I have come to understand about CS through our custody case. CS and visitation time are not at all considered interdependent. Custody has to do with legal rights, decision making etc NOT with who pays CS or even who sees the child. You can have shared parenting, equal legal custody, and rarely see your child. Or you can have Legal AND physical custody in which case you would normally receive CS AND claim the tax deduction. I don't think it's fair or right, but it's the way it seems to be at the moment.
Peace, love, and red wine
the situation now
fiancee had filed for full custody cause he assumed she didn't want the 50/50 after 8 months of basically having nothing to do with FSS...AFTER she was served with those papers she started the 50/50 and started to wreak havoc in our lives...so after 7 months of putting up with her drama fiancee and I decided to let her have him fulltime..now she wants MORE money and she wants the tax return when she didn't even take care of him for half of the year! I guess I'm just wanting MY fiancee to get some justice out of this instead of her always winning and getting what she wants...but if he's screwed out of the money than so be it...I'll have to accept that...I'm ready to make a shi*t storm out of how sexist the courts are here with good dads that DO pay and every time they fight for custody it's always, they just want to get out of their CS obligation...it's not always that way...he wanted full custody cause BM is a terrible mom who doesn't put FSS before everything else in her life...I guess we'll just have to deal
Justice
Is REALLY tricky here. Trust me. We when we sued for full custody, we really had to let go of our own thoughts on what justice would be. We had to release it to the powers that be so to speak, and hope for the best. If you guys gave her full custody, then I think you may be in for it really. We lucked out that BM was a willing opponent. Meaning she couldn't stop the insane behavior to save herself throughout the case. Even went so far as to alienate SD from her child psychologist and guardian ad litem. That's why we won essentially.
But in your case any attempt to settle up for the past now could back fire. Perhaps you could try to get CS to stay the same, based on the fact that you are not convinced BM will hold up her end of the bargain with full custody, since she hasn't taken visitation in the past.
Whatever your attorney suggests here I would take their advice. Is he sure he wants her to have full custody? That's a lot of rights he's signing away.
Peace, love, and red wine
it is tricky
but she's screwed him out of so much...he thought about the full custody thing for a long time. She was starting to blame me for the problems FSS has when he's over here, she went on MySpace and started slandering me, she was causing us all kinds of grief, and sending FSS back and forth every other week was not fair to him. If he wouldn't have given her control he would've had to take his case to the State Supreme Court and we don't have the money for that. FSS needs to have a place he can call home..and she has never played fair..she sure wouldn't give fiancee full custody cause she thinks I'm a criminal because I have a criminal record from my younger days...so she thinks I'm a "bad influence"( but my daughter isn't the screwed up one!) Anyway...he thought it would be easier like this...but I will bring up to him leaving the child support the same...I'll have him discuss it with his lawyer and see what she says...thanks Zen...
I dont think that he will be
I dont think that he will be able to collect any of the monies already paid to her, what he needs to do is file a motion to modify child support with the courts to get that changed, if he has kiddo all the time bm may have to start paying him. Sometimes it takes several months to get a hearing for modification but in NM anyways the decicion will go retroactive to the file date of the motion. Dad really needs to get that child support order changed and quickly!!!!!