You may have every intention of meeting your child support obligation. But you may be undergoing personal issues that are causing financial strain, making it more and more difficult to make ends meet each month. Given these circumstances, you may hope that your child’s other parent and the New York State family court will be understanding and allow at least a temporary reduction of your due amount. Well, before you jump to this assumption, please continue reading to learn whether your missed payments will prompt the court to modify your child support obligation and how one of the experienced Long Island child support lawyers at The Sklavos Law Group, P.C., can advise you on what to do before you find yourself in any legal trouble.
Will the family court modify child support after missed payments?
As a general rule of thumb, the New York State family court should hear about your recent financial struggles directly from you. Further, you should be proactive in notifying them, well before you begin to miss or fall short on your monthly child support payments. You may do so by filing a post-judgment modification and submitting evidence of your recent life event that has caused your financial issues (i.e., you got let go from your job, you got diagnosed with a serious health condition, etc).
Of note, this is far better than the alternative of the court being informed about this after your child’s other parent files a violation of support order petition. With this motion, the court may be less inclined to modify your support order to a lesser amount, regardless of your valid financial predicament. Rather, they may make orders that place further strain on you, such as garnishing your wages, intercepting your tax refunds, placing liens on your property, suspending your driver’s license and professional license, and much more.
Can the court take away visitation after missed support payments?
Even though you may be under a lot of financial stress right now, your main concern may be that your missed support payments will cause you to lose visitation rights to your child. Well, you may be relieved to find out that the New York State family court generally separates these two legal matters. This is because there is the belief that a child should not be deprived of a relationship with their parent simply because of personal financial issues.
However, visitation rights can be taken away if one parent exhibits instability. This may be an indirect effect of your financial struggles. For example, you may be unable to properly attend to your child if you are constantly out searching for a new job. Or, if you, sadly, can no longer afford to feed them or create safe living conditions for them while they are under your care (i.e., your electricity gets shut off, etc). Lastly, if your medical diagnosis has led to a depreciated physical, mental, or emotional capacity.
In another scenario, if your child’s other parent files a violation petition, they may present evidence that you willfully left your monthly support obligation unpaid. If the court has reason to believe this is true, it may hold you in contempt or accuse you of committing fraud. Either way, in a worst-case scenario, you may be placed in jail. Obviously, this may cause you to miss parenting time.
If you do not know how to fix this alone, allow one of the skilled Long Island family lawyers to support you. We at The Sklavos Law Group, P.C., understand that every family deals with unique issues, so we tailor our services to meet your exact needs and wishes. So please pick up the phone and give us a call today.