Just been to Child care enforcement with a friend. She and her ex (not married) have 2 kids (now 15 & 10) and the relationship ended a couple of years ago. They lived separately with the kids in the same house until Jan this year when she moved out with the children. They do stay with the father every other weekend and the odd day during the week on occasion. He has not paid her a penny since she moved out although she has been almost 100% responsible for their food and clothing and essentially there shelter since then
Hereās the thing, last month she finally got the court to give a figure for child support. She served him in May (although this is another issue) and the court said they would back date the child support to then from when they made the order on his weekly payment. However he then produced a few things he said he paid - YMCA weekly after school activities, swimming lessons and summer camp.
Nothing for food, shelter or clothing just extra curricular activities and the court applied the total of this to the arrears.
It seems ludicrous to me that you can apply those things but is this a legit resource you can apply to arrears?
While he should be paying cash support to her directly and in a timely manner, he certainly has a right to ask the judge to give him credit for legitimate, non-frivolous expenses heās paid for their children, unless a prior order already addresses expenses like these.
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OK but shouldānt she be able to turn around and say 'ok if he is getting relief because of those expenses Iād like to introduce my expenses for feeding, clothing and sheltering them for that period as well as other this list of other non-frivolous expenses that kids of this age need.
To be clear apart from what I listed he pays dick. And he is worth certainly more than he is telling the court. The figures are he has to pay $467 a week and for the period he didnāt pay the back pay amounted to $4,500 and he managed to get that reduced to $800 because he fucking bought a swimming lesson and paid their YMCA fee.
My wife and I are really good friends (obviously) with the person so Iām biased and emotionally involved to a certain extent but this seems utter fucking bullshit to me.
I wasnāt going to bring this up but fuck it - Sheās black (and struggling to make ends meet) and heās a white old guy who will now stop paying for any of these extra curricular activities because he now has to pay the bare minimum the court has decided.
PS to add
āWhile he should be paying cash support to her directly and in a timely mannerā
She has just received the first week he was told to pay more than 4 weeks after he was ordered,.
Itās all one pile of money though. As noted as long as itās not for a gift or something frivolous it can be applied. Just like the receiver of child support doesnāt have to account for where every penny goes as long as the kid(s) are being taken care of.
She should probably refuse any outside help on paying for stuff like that if she wants it all to flow through a lump sum.
Based on what you said, I doubt there is much recourse but itās a question best asked her own attorney who knows the specific facts. So much is situational in this stuff that if a guy is always playing games, the judge might give them less leeway, and vice versa.
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She does have a lawyer for custody (they have an agreement on this as she has no problem with him seeing the children etc but it has not been signed thru the court yet), and she is saying it does seem odd that they are applying this stuff. My friend is sending her all the documentation etc so she can review it.
I hear what you are saying about one pile of money but it does seem that any costs he had are being applied and any costs she had are not. She is feeding, clothing and virtually everything else for them but apparently that counted for shit during the period in question.
Itās not like he can now go back every week now and say āhey I bought them each a snickers bar so knock that off my weekly billā, which it seems did apply to the arrears period.
The child support payments are to compensate for his share of everything, including feeding, clothing, etc. so no reason for her to document those expenses.
It seems to me that the disagreement stems from the father āchoosingā a lifestyle for the child that the mother cannot afford on her salary + the court ordered payments, i.e. if the dad had just given all the money to the mother directly and not paid for anything, the mother would have decided that there was not room in the budget for YMCA fees, swim lessons, etc.