First off, if this is in the wrong place, please move it. Thanks.
I have 2 friends who got divorced. There is a child from the marriage. They had an equal custody divorce. The father never offered any help by way of support, so my friend filed for an amended decree (in June), asking for full custody and child support. It was granted and signed by the judge in October.
Now here’s the problem I have with the whole thing. The state we live in has a convoluted formula for figuring child support payments, based in part on both peoples income. In this case, the state formula decided that he should pay $569 per month in child support. My friend has no say in the amount. She can’t say “No, I don’t want that much”. I suppose that she could send what she doesn’t want or need back to him every month, but why should she have to?
But the thing that just makes no sense to me is that the support he has to pay begins on the date she originally went to see the lawyer…IN JUNE. So the back support has been building up for 6 months (due on 1st of month), even though he had no idea how much it would even be or where to send it. He’s starting this whole thing out 6 months behind.
This whole thing just doesn’t seem right to me. Can someone offer some ideas that could help me understand this?
When I got child support many years ago, it not only didn’t go back to when you saw the lawyer, it didn’t even go back to when the judge ordered it. It didn’t start being payable until the judge signed the order, which he had 30 days to do, and he took every day of that.
One party wouldn’t generally get full custody unless it was warranted.
When you say the father “never offered any help” what do you mean? Was he not taking the kids when he was meant to? Something else?
Whatever he did or didn’t do, that compelled the court to grant the mom full custody, also meant that the court felt he should be responsible for child support all that time.
It sucks that he is starting out behind, but there are guidelines and calculators online - he could have estimated it himself and put it aside.
I find it troubling that him starting out 5 months behind in child support is the concern; mine would be for the kids who don’t have a dad who is looking out for them!
So he knew he had a child, that required financial support, yet provided none, and is now stunned the court has assessed back payments?
Who do you think housed and clothed the child while he was not paying squat? The Mom is already behind, why should he be?
If he wanted the courts to have a more generous view of him, in all of this, perhaps he should have provided whatever support he could manage, to the Mom, while the courts got it sorted.
If he’s offered/provided zero financial support to his child, thus far, he kind of deserves what he got.
To clarify a little. First and foremost, I have no problem that he is having to pay child support. That isn’t the gripe.
When I stated that he never offered any help, when she asked him for some financial help for medicine or clothes for school or some other need, he always had some excuse for why he couldn’t send any. So again, that he has to pay is not the problem I have.
The child is a 6 year old girl. The mom has had practically full custody anyway due to the fact that the girl is going to school in the town where the mom lives. The dad moved to a city 180 miles away and has only seen the girl when it was convenient for him. And then he thought the mom should bring the girl to see him rather than him driving the 180 miles. The custody part of the amended decree was merely a formality making the living arrangement legally permanent. And rightfully so.
As I stated in the OP, my question/concern is that even IF he had wanted to begin making support payments in June, there is no way that he could have because he wouldn’t have known how much nor would have have known where to send it. Consequently, he is starting out 3500 bucks behind with a tidy 9% interest rate tagged on by the state. If that’s not enough, the state also puts a lien on him, the ramifications of which I can’t even fathom. I would hope that all that means is that if there is a tax return, they will take it and apply it to any back support, but the way politicians operate, who knows WHAT it means.
Also, he isn’t contesting any of this and is, in fact, agreeing to it all. The concern is all mine, none of which has anything to do with what they may or may not do. My overall question would be how can the state declare that he should pay back support BEFORE the judge ever signed it to make it legally binding?
You say they had an equal custody divorce. Was the kid with the father 50% of the time before she gained full custody? And was father paying for 50% of the kid’s support, (food, clothing shelter, etc.) ?
If so, the father should have his lawyer fight the back order of child support. If the dad did not fulfill his 50% of the custody and support obligation by providing for the kid, during that time, then the dad doesn’t really have a leg to stand on.
Child custody is a civil matter. The judge awarded the mother damages for lack of support from the dad. Judge can award those damages for any period of time he/she wants to.
IANAL, but your OP says “my friend filed for an amended decree (in June), asking for full custody and child support. It was granted and signed by the judge in October.” So presumably the child support payments start from when the divorce was filed. And if the $569 per month is more than she now needs for the child, she should save the excess for later, such as for college.
Because the child existed, consumed resources, and required financial support, all along. Including; “BEFORE the judge ever signed it to make it legally binding?”
He knows he should have been paying something. He has actively avoided that, mostly with excuses. Now he wants to pretend that his obligation begins when the judge signs? Wrong. He was being a douche, by not contributing, all along, ( he knows it, she knows it, and the judge knows it. Amazed you don’t get it. )
She covered those back amounts in full. He should have been contributing. She is starting out behind, he should too, since he was the one being negligent.
Whether he’s having a good month or a bad month, it costs to house and feed his child. If he can’t or doesn’t pay, then he owes for it, with interest.
As a result of his childish behaviour the judge is, rightly, assessing back amounts due, with interest. Why should he be rewarded for being a deadbeat? Mom shouldn’t start out getting screwed out of monies he should have paid because he had ‘excuses’!
He was playing a childish game and it had consequences. Seems like he gets it, and you don’t.
I think the simple answer is that he did know he was the father of the little girl, he did know that he had an obligation to provide for his child, and he could not legally or rationally expect the mother to do this alone.
As for how much? There are usually guidelines, possibly from the IRS, but apart from that a rough guess of $100/wk would have been a start. He could have put that aside or better still sent it to his wife through a traceable bank transaction. The money after all is for the little girl which is the essential point.
Edit: I see Elbows has in a forthright manner beaten me to it.
I’m not sure whether you’re asking about why this is fair (regardless of the law) or how the judge has legal authority to order this. But the basic answer is the same: Because the father has a legal duty to support his child from the moment she was born, and he doesn’t get out of that duty just because he ignored it for months and years until a judge finally had to step in and tell him to fulfill it.
I mean, if you agree it’s fair that the father should pay child support, why is it fair for the mother to have to support the child all by herself during the time it takes her to realize that the father isn’t going to pay voluntarily, get to court, and have the court make a ruling?
Now, it doesn’t sound like this is the case, but what if the father was intentionally delaying court actions (there are lots of ways to do this) to try and get out of paying for as long as possible? Would it be fair for the mother to support the child alone for even longer? Would it be right to reward the father for delaying?
Suppose that he had paid her something in those six months. Would that have counted in his favor? Since he would have been paying “not court ordered” money, wouldn’t that be invisible to the court, and he’d still owe all of that back support anyway?
Please understand here. I have no vested interest in what goes on between the two of them other than my own curiosity, due to the fact that I know them. I can’t change anything that has happened or may happen between the two, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.
Should he have contributed to the welfare of his child? Most definitely. Obviously, he failed. However, I have found out that in the original decree between them, there was no stated child support amount. In fact, child support wasn’t even mentioned. It was basically agreed between the two of them and stated in the decree that it would be equal custody and equal everything else. It was one of those “do it yourself” divorce kits that the parties fill out between them and then file it with the court. (In retrospect, I think they now know that those aren’t good for anything unless it is for the simpleest of cases.)
Crap happens in life so a periodic instance of not being able to help financially can be accepted. But it was only after it became apparent that he was never going to live up to his half of the deal that she decided to take the modification action. And that is why I asked the question about how they could get him for 6 month back support. Never that I had a problem with it.
When I got divorced we agreed on a support amount while we dealt with the legal details, it wasn’t too hard to do.
When we finished the legal process 18 months later, the support I had paid was considered to have covered that time period even though the final legal amount did not exactly match the previous amount. This was probably because she didn’t try to fight that, if she had I assume the court would have made me pay the difference.
You need to understand the court’s goals to understand how those agreements might be accepted or not.
In our case we presented the court with our agreement and they approved it, because the people helping us create the agreement knew the court’s goals (proper financial support for kids and ex, etc.) and therefore we stayed within their parameters.
While I agree with you and it makes perfect sense, it is not my experience. In my case, and everyone I know in this situation, the CS was payable from the time the order was signed.
The judge doesn’t know if the guy is/was a douchebag and will rarely take the wife’s word for it. (even though most states are mom-friendly) If he has a lawyer worth table salt he’ll maintain that he’s been helping.
My experience (IANAL) is that the courts won’t rehash months of expenses to see if he paid, and whether it was an equitable sum. The whole idea of court ordered and administered CS is to eliminate the he said-><-she said of family finances and CS and to put into place a formal, track-able system to make sure the child is provided for.
For every douchebag that this retro-active way of assessing CS catches up to, there will be another stand up guy who’s been paying for food, violin lessons, tuition, half the rent, coats, gloves, hats, school supplies and sundry items who will end up paying twice.
