Understanding the Situation
Hi, I’m James Wirth, a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mother turned off child support for two years and now after a disagreement is going after back child support, is there anything I can do? That’s the question that we received through our Facebook or through our YouTube videos. What can I do after the mother turned off child support for two years?
Okay, so it sounds like there’s a court order in place, perhaps for custody, visitation, and child support. And that in this case, the father is ordered to pay child support, however, sounds like contrary to the order, they started exercising visitation a little bit different, started going to a 50-50 schedule, and then during that time frame, she’s like, oh, don’t worry about child support. Now they have a disagreement, she’s withholding the child from them, and she says, I’m gonna go after you for two years of back child support, what can be done?
Possible Solutions
So first off, you’re in a very bad position, mistakes were made. What you should have done is if there’s gonna be any change of visitation where now you’re getting a lot more time, file for a modification with the court while you’re in agreement’s the best time to do it. You have an agreement, it’s drafted up, you both sign it, the judge signs it, you file it, that’s the new court order. That would also then modify child support to put it down what it should be under a 50-50 schedule. It sounds like that didn’t happen in your case, so now you’re in the predicament that you’re in, which means child support cannot be modified retroactively.
But there’s still something you can do. What you’d wanna do is obviously if there’s been changes, file for that modification. Separate from that, when dealing with the two years of back child support she is trying to enforce, you’d wanna file a motion to determine that arrearage. Now the law says you can’t modify it retroactively, but there are what we call equitable arguments or fair arguments where you would want to argue to the court and say, yes, the court order says that, yes, I technically owe that, but you shouldn’t enforce it because the child was residing with me half of that time period, and she told me don’t worry about the child support.
Seek Legal Advice
So it wouldn’t be fair to enforce this order. You can make those equitable arguments, there’s just no guarantee the court will go along with it. You’re not entitled to those arguments, or you’re not entitled to that as arguments winning the day, but you do have the equitable arguments can be made, so you should make those. Sounds like you’re in a complicated situation though, so you definitely are gonna wanna talk to an attorney privately and confidentially to get legal advice more specific to your facts.
To get that scheduled with an attorney at my office, you can go online to MakeLawEasy.com to schedule a low-cost initial strategy session.
