Sunday evening, three days before Christmas, and I’m at the office keeping up with the mail. One piece of mail is a copy of a missive from the Office of the Attorney General to a client who is an obligor, paying child support. This seems to be a standard letter that would go out to any obligor. It says: “We understand that many parents choose to provide a little extra child support for their children during the holiday season. Did you know that if you pay child support directly to the custodial person or the child(ren), you risk not receiving credit for the payment? To assure you receive proper credit for your child support payments, please send your payments to ….. yadda yadda, the Attorney General’s Child Support Disbursement Office”.
O. K., first of all, any obligor should be made aware that informal payments (cash, purchases, direct payments to the obligee) are not counted as child support. When a claim is made by the Attorney General or the obligee for delinquent child support, a claim that payments were made but not recorded is difficult to prove and/or impossible to be credited. This is advice made to obligors by any competent legal counsel – make your payments through the disbursal unit for proper credit.
However, is this really worth the postage and paper from the AG’s office? Now there’s no doubt that most parents are providing as well as possible for their children, and at this holiday time, are buying gifts, clothes, paying for school trips for the high-schoolers, etc. But how many are actually kicking up the child support over the amount required?
Now for anyone that is actually delinquent on child support payments, I think the AG has made an interesting and important suggestion: For heaven’s sake, if you have any risk of withstanding a child support enforcement action this year, use every possible dollar to pay off that delinquency as much as and as soon as possible. When there’s a prospect of standing before the child support enforcement master, while he/she considers whether you need to sit in jail as a lesson, you’ll thank the AG for reminding you to pay up now!
On the other hand, if a parent is really contemplating an extra payment to the child or the other parent, (and he really is current with child support), doesn’t running it through the child support collection as an advance payment on a legal obligation somehow diminish the holiday spirit of the gift? Just a thought.
Filed under: Helping You Keep It, Texas Divorce, Uncategorized | Tagged: child support, texas child support
