Texas Unpaid Child Support Attorney
free consultation
Don’t Let Unpaid Child Support Limit Your Children
Child support often goes unpaid
However, it is unfortunately common for the non-custodial parent to avoid paying the court-ordered support. Unpaid child support means that the child has fewer financial resources, which can impact the extracurricular and academic opportunities that are available to them. In worst-case scenarios, unpaid child support can even make it impossible for the custodial parent to provide a safe home and a healthy diet.
That is why the state of Texas makes it possible to sue for unpaid child support. If you are a custodial parent who has not been receiving the support due, you are not alone. At the end of 2013, there was more than $13 billion in unpaid child support in the state of Texas. That means that lawyers like those at Eaton Family Law are familiar with situations like yours and can help you recover the child support you are owed.
You should never feel guilty about going after unpaid child support. This money is owed not to you, but to your children. Even if they have had no relationship with their other parent, it is still that parent’s responsibility to financially support them until adulthood.
If you know that your former partner has had a difficult time making ends meet financially, you might be concerned that they are not able to make their payments. In those cases, the child support amounts due can be amended. However, they cannot simply walk away from their responsibility.
You owe it to your children
If your former partner has been negligent on their payments for years, you are owed not just the original amount of the payments, but also an additional 6 percent per year on that amount, to account for the growth that the money could have had.
That means that you could be looking at a substantial amount of money, enough to prevent your child from having to take on significant student debt in college. Even if they are already in their teens, that money could make it possible for them to start their adulthood on solid financial footing.
Our Unpaid Child Support Lawyer in Texas Can Help
Child support becomes legally binding the moment a court order is signed. In the process, an attorney will have decided the reasonable amount to expect. Because paying child support is a legal requirement, the funds can be withheld from the obligor’s paychecks. That means their employer will send the money directly to the state, which will then send it to you. This prevents your former partner from being able to spend the money themselves or simply keep it. You might need to serve this paperwork multiple times if your former partner changes employers.
In cases where the obligor has become severely negligent, the state of Texas has the Child Support Evader Program. This program identifies parents who are more than $5,000 delinquent in their payments and have not made regularly scheduled payments in at least six months. If the parents also do not have arrest warrants or are currently involved in bankruptcy proceedings, the Office of the Attorney General can also help recover that support.
Don’t wait to get help
If you are owed back child support, now is the time to start working to recover it. The longer you wait, the less likely it is that you will be able to recover the majority of what your children deserve. As the amount owed grows larger and larger, it becomes less and less likely that the other parent will be able to meet their debts. The average child support debt is more than $30,000, and large sums of that are never recovered.
If you need to try to recover unpaid child support, whether the noncustodial parent stopped making payments a few months ago or many years ago, you need to connect with a family law attorney. At Eaton Family Law, we are very familiar with the law surrounding unpaid child support and can help you navigate the system to get the money that your child is entitled to.
We know how difficult it can be to raise children as a single parent, and we take pride in helping you navigate a complex system so that you can give your children the best childhood possible. Give us a call today to start recovering the unpaid child support you are owed.
