This seems to be a game that almost every divorced couple ends up playing at some point or another. Many decide very quickly that this is not a game that they would wish to be actively involved in, and soon come to their senses and knock the behavior off. Sadly others become wrapped up in this tug of war of who can hurt who the most cycle.

With the children involved in the situation being the pieces of this game, they are used as pawns, as trophies, and as dollar signs, no matter what the reason was for the start of the vicious cycle of no child support payments, and no visits with the child for the non-custodial parent, the children are paying a high price, while the parents are trying to get even.

If a non-custodial parent has lost his or her job, or run into financial troubles in general, then he or she should immediately contact the courts to make them aware of your situation, they cannot help you if they are not aware of any problems. Try to keep the custodial parent informed about the situation. You don’t have to divulge every financial detail to them, but letting them know that you are going to be late, or perhaps miss a payment, will give them time to rework their own budget around the missing child support payment.

Custodial parents, should never, and I will repeat never, refuse to let a non-custodial parent visit with his or her child, based solely on late or missing child support payments. If there are issues with child support payments, you need to call your child support enforcement agency and make them aware of the situation, not punish your child by cutting their other parent out of their lives.

Does not paying child support hurt the custodial parent? Yes, the custodial parent counts on that money to help take care of the children as well as to run the household. When the child support payments are not made on time, the custodial parent may not have enough money to cover all of the expenses of raising children.

Does withholding the child until payment is made hurt the non-custodial parent. Of course, non-custodial parents have already been taken out of the every day lives of their children, the little time that they do have is a precious gift, one that should not be dangled in front of their hearts like a carrot.

Both tactics work great, they each severely disrupt the life of the other parent. Yet at the same time, the children are suffering. They hear mom yelling at dad on the phone, they are upset that their parents are fighting. They are sad and wonder why dad isn’t coming to see them again this weekend, what did they do wrong? Mom is angry that the electric might get shut off since she can’t pay the bill, and the children are frightened by the idea of no lights, they feel alone because dad isn’t there again, and they are angry at both of their parents for making them feel the way that they do.

Children should never be put in the middle of adult issues, they cannot handle it, and they simply shouldn’t be asked to do so. If mom and dad are fighting over money, or visitation then that is a fight between the two of them, but the children should not miss out on visits with their non-custodial parent, and happy evenings with their custodial parent who can let go of the issues and not put them onto the child.

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