Fathers’ Rights: Understanding Child Support for Stepchildren
You’re divorced and have children, with a court order or modified decree outlining your child support obligations. Then you meet someone new, get married, and your new spouse has children of their own. Their biological father may be absent, and you’ve become the primary financial support for those children. Now you’re wondering—can you get your child support reduced because of this?
Hi, I’m Clint Hastings, a Tulsa Dads.Law attorney here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I focus on fathers’ rights. Although you are building a new family or an additional family and you are the primary supporter of those children financially, you do not get any type of deduction or offset for what you pay towards those new stepchildren. Your obligations under the law are to your biological children or children whom you are the legal father of.
Legal Options for Step-Parent Adoption
When you marry and become a step-parent, you are not the legal father of those children. However, there’s an exception because in the question that I presented at the start, I said that maybe the biological fathers of those children aren’t in the picture. You might qualify for a step-parent adoption where you become the legal father of those children, and that may be something you seek, not just for child support benefits or offsets, but because that would give you that full parent-child relationship and equal footing for those children.
Even if you got divorced from that new spouse, you would have rights to have visitation or custodial rights to those children. So it’s definitely worth talking with an attorney about if that is your situation. Contact Tulsa child support attorney Clint Hastings at (918) 962-0900 for a low-cost consultation, and we’d be glad to set up a consultation for you. Thanks.
