Home › Civil Law › Family Law › What happens if you do not pay child support and there is a court order to do so?
What happens if you do not pay child support and there is a court order to do so?
A judge ordered child support to be paid by my ex. The order was dated June 24th of this year. So far my ex has still not paid a penny of child support (three months after the court order was put in). He is already in arrears (my child is over a year old now). Is he going to get in trouble for not doing as the judge ordered?
I have child support enforcement working on this matter, but I am surprised that he is not in contempt of court by not paying his court ordered child support immediately.
He is in contempt. Child support is looking for his employer so they can attach his wages. If they take much longer take him back to court. Keep in touch with child support agency.
You didn’t say where you are but for example in England it can be deducted from your husbands pay by his employer. In fact it would not even be dealt with by a court. It would be dealt with by the CSA (Child Support Agency).
I have read of people going to jail for non payment of Child Support too.
In the U.S. he could end up in jail, if he doesn’t pay and the amount gets pretty big. If he happens to be a truck driver they can and probably will suspend his CDL, in some states the will suspend his drivers license too. He can also have his federal and state taxes withheld to help pay you. Keep bugging the enforcement people.
sounds irresponsible and immature.
adults need to take responsibilty.
i do not understand people like this
his wages should be garnished by court order.
and his movements restricted to keep him in sight.
what a loser, not wanting to feed his own children.
What state are you in?
IMO, the department that handles child support is so flawed that many dead beats laugh at the system. Maybe other states are different, but I’m in Texas and they seem to make a huge deal about enforcing child support. My daughter’s dad hasn’t paid his child support in over a year. He has a contempt of court and has a 10K warrant. I filed three years ago and he’s never been consistent with paying and it’s taken this long to finally put a warrant out on him. The problem is that they will not ‘go look’ for him. Pretty much he would have to be pulled over on a moving violation or get in trouble for something else for them to run him.
Here, the father has to go three months of nonpayment, you HAVE to report it every month. If you don’t then they let it just slip by. After 3 months they’ll put it back in the system and you’ll have to go back to court. Which you will have to wait another 2-4 months just to get a court date. If you’re lucky they will do something about it, if not they will reset the court date again for ‘reflection’. It’s stupid. They reset mine over the span of a year until recently, and when he didn’t show for his compliance hearing (even after signing new papers saying he would pay and even LOWERING his payments from $160 to $90, which wtf does that pay for?) they finally issued the warrant. They won’t go look for him though, so much good that does.
Good luck to you, hopefully the system works for you better than it has for me.
he will go to jail, then you get to feed him and pay for his excellent health care while he is inside with your tax money, sometimes you just have to get on with your life, next time pick a better man to breed with
Similar situation, except with us my husband has custody and his ex girl friend is suppose to pay child support. Here is what happened in our case in georgia.
1. Filed a case with child support enforcement in February 09′ that she was more than 3 months behind in support.
2. March they issued her and us a letter stateing that it was a lawful order and she needed to make arrangements
3. Mid March, we all received a letter stateing that if she didn’t pay up they were going to suspend her driverse license.
4. Mid March they issued a letter saying they were going to contact her employer the get the wages deducted.
5. Mid April, child support services (CSS) sent us a letter stateing that her job was not set up for that and other means were going to have to happen because the usual garnishment of her check was not going to work.
6. Mid May we received word that a court date had been issues for her to answer charges of contempt and we were welcome to come but our attendance was not mandatory.
7. Court date 6/7/09, she didn’t show up. The judge found her guilty of contempt and said it was lawful for child support services to have a warrent issued for the amount of the entire arrears and support to bring her up to date based on the May filing date.
8. 7/10 the order was finally signed for contempt and the warrant was processed.
9. 7/25 we told her she couldn’t have visitation because there was a warrant for her, and she called over to child support services and they said she needed to pay the entire amount or she would be thrown in jail until the entire amount was brought to child support services.
10. 7/27/09 she paid the entire amount owed.
Don’t forget to choose a best answer. Hope this has been helpful!
If you’re the man owing, you get held in contempt and go to jail, even if he has sole custody.
If you’re one of the 15 out of 100 non-custodial mothers actually ordered to pay, of which less than 1 on average actually pay any, nothing happens as it would be harmful to the children to know their mother is a deadbeat.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
I don’t know about your State, but the Division of Child Support for South Dakota states that if you are behind 3 months on a court ordered child support, Child Support Enforcement themselves will initiate court action which can result in going to jail. But…you must understand that having a court order does not make Child Support Enforcement happen. For Enforcement to happen, you must file for support enforcement through your local child support agency. Lots of paperwork is needed for this, like a copy of the divorce decree or proof of paternity, financial statements with all your bills you pay, with verbage that orders a specific dollar amount that has been court ordered and filed through the Child Support Division for Enforcement.
In short, right now he/she is in contempt of court. You can take him/her back to court with a lawyer on your own.
Call your Child Support Enforcement Office and find out the following: What stage is your enforcement order at? Is it finalized? Do they go after father’s/mother’s who are in arrears? How many month’s does he/she have to be in arrears before Child Support will take him back to court. You will have more answers and a clearer idea of how to handle this situation.
Good Luck, I’ve been dealing with a child support situation for more than 3 years. I’ve got him paying most of the money he owes, he just doesn’t pay all of it all of the time. I use my govenerment/state resources which have been very helpful.
I have the same problem and unfortunately until he is in arrears so much there is nothing that will happen to him. In ohio if he is over $2000 owed then his drivers and any professional license can be suspended and once he gets to over $5000 owed he can go to jail. And I bet he can come up with money to get bailed out if it gets to that point but he can’t to pay child support. How ironic.