Long story short, my sister is currently dating with a guy. From various things he and she have said, it seems that he has a couple children with two different women to whom he owes child support. When I ask my sister about this directly she claims that none of this is true but we have our doubts.
My question is,
Is there an easy way to find out whether an individual is supposed to pay child support? The locations would be Ohio or Virginia.
Whether said payments are being made?
If there are any legal proceedings (e.g., warrants) out for someone because of not paying child support.
As you may have gathered, the rest of the family thinks the guy is no good but so far my sister has turned a deaf ear. We thought that if our suspicions are born out, it might make keep her from making a decision she will regret…probably not but at least we tried.
I’m willing to spend money on background checks (if free resources aren’t available) but don’t know which would make sense.
In Ohio, at least, you’d have to know the county where the child support case was filed.
I just went to the Clerk of Courts site for the Ohio county in which my cousin resides, put in her name for a “domestic” cast-type search, and found out exactly how much her kid’s dad pays in child support.
Not every county in every state has all of this info up, and it doesn’t always go back too far (looks like the County I’m looking in goes back to about 1996), but it’s the place to start. Just need to find the county - for Ohio.
Not sure, but in most cases, child support i a substantial part of your take-home pay. With 2 kids, he should(?!) be paying about 30% or more of his paycheque. Unless the guy’s rolling in it, the effect on lifestyle should be obvious.
Of course if he’s NOT making payments, that’s a whole different pile of trouble waiting to happen; not sure what the rules are on considering combined household income when the collectors catch up with him. Certainly, the list of things they nail deadbeat dads with gets longer and longer - tax returns, even drivers licenses, I hear. If he owes, I would suspect a credit check should catch that…
Does it sound like the guy has skipped out on these payments? Does it sound like the mothers are collecting welfare? Again, some states will chase a guy to reimburse them for what he should have paid that the welfare department paid instead. It’s one thing to be chased by some mother with limited resources, it’s another to hav the entire state bureaucracy after you. Or two states…
The fact that he won’t come clean about it, if the relationship is serious, should tell you plenty about his character.
I would suspect the simplest thing is to chase down the mothers and ask them. By the time he walked away from #2, odds are they won’t keep quiet out of respect and privacy concerns.
She probably will be defensive, but do it anyway. Just don’t make her make an immediate choice. Show her the information, and then hug her, reassure her that you love her no matter what, and leave her to her thoughts. In a quiet moment, it will come back to her.
md2000 - the assumption is that he is NOT making support payments. The rest of the family is plenty convinced mainly because my sister has discussed this when things went on the rocks with this guy.
digs/trucelt - I suspect that my sister will NOT listen as she has a very bad track record with men and has never paid much attention to input before. Still it is worth a try and I’ve volunteered to play the “bad cop” role on this.
Anyway…I’ve found the court records of one of his divorces and it looks like he’s being pursued for child support. But the county (Franklin county, Ohio) doesn’t have the docs online so I will have to order them.
I could contact his ex, but don’t really want to wade into that emotional mine field.
Then you want to ask a real lawyer what the financial implications are for her money and assets if she’s shacked up with him when the lawyers catch up to him…