Dallas Divorce Lawyer Blog
You are a parent who has primary possession of the children and you need financial assistance from the other parent but they are not willing to help out by agreement alone. You realize you are going to have to take additional measures to get anything out of them; more specifically, you visit with an attorney and understand that it is going to take a court order.
Regardless of whether your case is a divorce or suit affecting the parent-child relationship, you will need to include a request for child support within your pleadings. This ensures that you have noticed the other parent that you are seeking this in court and it ensures that you can bring this issue up at the hearing. If your case is just beginning, this issue would be addressed at a temporary orders hearing. You and your attorney will put on evidence of the monthly net resources of the other party. How do you do that if you do not know what the other party is making? Your attorney at Guest & Gray will ensure that the party is noticed and ordered to appear with their financial records so that the judge and/or your attorney can calculate the correct amount of child support. However, if the other party ignores the court order and does not bring their financial records, typically the judge will be agitated with this and start asking the party questions on the stand about their financial information.
Once the monthly net is determined, child support is calculated based upon a percentage amount determined by the number of children involved in the suit as well as other factors. For instance, if you have one child child support would be 20% of the obligor parent’s monthly net resources. If the obligor parent has one other child that they are responsible for (remarries or has another child with another person) lowers the percentage down to 17.5% and then gets lower depending upon the number of additional children outside of your case.
Also, if the obligor parent provides health insurance coverage for the child, that amount is credited to the parent’s child support payment in the calculation. If the obligor parent does not pay for the child’s health insurance and you do, the court might order the obligor parent to pay child support and reimburse you the health insurance premium. If health insurance is not available and the child is on a government assistance program, then the obligor parent would pay child support and a cash medical support payment for the government assistance (this amount is kept by the Attorney General’s office).
As you can see, it boils down to a court order for child support. Once that court order is issued, the order will be sent to the local Attorney General’s office by your attorney and they will set up your child support account. Once they send you their “welcome” packet, you have the opportunity of setting up a direct deposit account. All child support payments will be made through the state disbursement unit.
Contact a family law attorney at Guest & Gray today so you can proceed forward with getting your child support set up. We look forward to helping you with your case.