Legal Issues

Last week I wrote about a town in Texas that has already collected 4 million dollars in delinquent child support, well my friends Texas certainly has not stopped there! Going with the notion that everything truly is bigger in Texas, another county, McLennan, has collected a staggering and record breaking 24.8 million dollars in back child support, bringing the state of Texas to a record amount of...are you ready for this...2.3 billion dollars. That is not a typo folks, I wrote billion and I meant it! It seems as though the state of Texas has been quite diligent in going after its offenders and has done an outstanding job of getting deadbeat parents to cough up what is owed to their children… [more]

'After beating my ex-wife in court in the 1980 Hague Convention procedures that helped me return the children to the Netherlands, I discovered I had won a legal battle but lost my family,'

-Yahoo News

In the wee hours of the morning, while others were fast asleep in their beds, police in Tarrant County, Texas were getting ready for a hunt. They were on the prowl for the areas worst child support offenders, and while some were able to elude capture and arrest, many were not, and police were able to round up thirty six deadbeat dads and haul them off for failure to pay child support. This particular precinct has collected roughly four million dollars during this year alone in delinquent child support, which leads one to ponder exactly how much back child support is owed throughout the United States, and why so many parents are not paying to support the children that they are creating. Is… [more]

Child support is often something that parents deal with before pursuing a stepparent adoption. Many times families use the lack of child support on an existing order of support as proof of the non-custodial parent's abandonment of the child, while other families end up negotiating a stepparent adoption after initiating negotiations for a child support order. Some non-custodial parents would rather sign over their rights instead of paying child support for a child that they have no plan on keeping in contact with or being a parent to. If you are in the state of California and are thinking of modifying an existing child support order, or beginning a new case for an order of support, you can start your journey… [more]

Most of us are painfully aware of the new passport rules which have made it harder to obtain a passport, as well as making the wait to get the passport into one’s hands seemingly go on forever! What many people may not be aware of is how some of the new rules are doing wonders when it comes to collecting back child support from non-custodial parents. The government denies passports, both new and renewed, to non-custodial parents who are more than $2,500 behind in their child support obligation. The parent has to come up with the cash and get current on his or her child support payments before the State Department will give the O.K. for them to travel abroad, or to re-enter the United… [more]

The above is a question that many non-custodial parents find themselves asking when they are considering allowing a stepparent adoption for their biological child who resides with the custodial parent. For many non-custodial parents child support is a large factor when deciding to allow a stepparent adoption. Child support can be extremely expensive, and sending off such a huge check every month for a child that the non-custodial parent never sees, for one reason or another, can get the non-custodial parent wondering why he or she is paying so much for a child who never visits, or who has bonded to someone else? While child support obligations would cease for the non-custodial parent once the adoption is completed, it is important for the non-custodial parent to know… [more]

A 44 year old man was in the news recently, for failure to pay his court ordered child support for his three children, who reside with their mother. Richard Delancey pleaded guilty earlier this week to four counts of criminal nonsupport of three children, which is in violation of his 1999 child support order. Delancey was ordered to pay $669 per month to help support his three children, yet has failed to make a single payment since April of 2006. Criminal nonsupport is a Class IV felony, which is punishable by a $10,000 fine, or up to five years in jail…or both. Being almost $26,000 behind in support payments, Delancey may find himself in a heap of hot water… [more]

A non-custodial father has recently pled guilty in Federal Court, to kidnapping his five-year-old son and taking him to Mexico. Missing since August of 2005, when the father failed to drop his son off at a daycare provider, FBI and Mexican authorities found both the father and the son in Cancun, Mexico in December of that same year. The boy was then reunited with his mother in Pittsburgh. While the father is charged with international parental kidnapping, and will be sentenced in November, he has been released since he has already served the minimum sentence…ten months in jail, federal sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of ten to sixteen months. The conditions of his release are a seven p.m. curfew as well as being restricted… [more]

In my recent post about child custody, I explained the main types of child custody. One of the more rare child custody arrangements, is what is referred to as ‘bird’s nest’ custody. In this unique situation instead of the children switching between mom’s house and dad’s house on a set schedule, it is the parents who rotate in and out of the house, while the children stay in one centralized location, one home. It seems that very few parents are able to keep their relationship civil enough after a divorce, or demise of a live in relationship, to keep this kind of arrangement going, yet there are a few families who are able to pull it off… [more]

When parents decide to end a marriage and divorce one another they must go through the long and heartbreaking process of dividing up the life that the two of them have built together, including dividing the time spent with the children. The parents must work out between the two of them who is going to have custody of the children when, how long the children will be with one parent before switching to the custody of the other parent, how to split up the holidays, who provides the transportation for visitation, and so forth. Many parents have a hard time working through all of these emotional issues on their own, and lawyers and court mediators often must become involved in order for a custody