You Could Benefit By Modifying Your Child Support Payments
So, right after the divorce decree was filed, you lost your job and you had to get a lower-paying one, but you don’t think you can do anything to reduce your child support for a year. Hi, I’m Tulsa child support attorney Clint Hastings. I practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I focus on fathers’ rights. This question is a corollary to one in another video that I answered about whether you get a higher-paying job after the divorce, and what to do then. This is where you’ve lost your job or gotten a demotion, or for whatever reason, your income has gone down dramatically after the decree, and you think you need to wait a year to do anything about it.
Now, I don’t know where this year thing comes from. I hear it a lot. People think they have to wait a year. However, in decrees, what usually the usual language is, is that every year the parties will exchange income information with each other. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take action quicker, and in fact, you should. The minute your income goes down by anything more than a couple of hundred dollars, you should look into filing a modification to see how much that brings down your child support. Or if you’re laid off entirely, you absolutely need to immediately file for a modification.
Immediate Action is Key
The big reason for this is that child support cannot be retroactively modified. So if you sit on your hands for six months and then say, hey, I lost my job six months ago. Can I go back and reduce my child support starting six months ago? The answer is no, you cannot. It will only be when you file from that date forward. Now, you don’t have to wait a year. The standard is material change in circumstances can support a modification in the child support.
Negotiating Options
Same thing goes if it happens to her. A lot of times we negotiate these things. If it seems to be a temporary situation, sometimes we get an abeyance by agreement in child support. Just staying the child support until you get a job. Sometimes people get unemployment and we make negotiations around that money. It just depends. But you should not sit on your hands. You need to take immediate action when this happens.
Call Us Now for a Low-Cost Consultation
Give the Tulsa Dads.Law attorney a call at 918-962-0900 if you have further questions on this topic or other topics and we will be glad to speak with you. Thanks.
