Posted on 09/14/2008 10:22:41 AM PDT by RogerFGay
A simple modification of support based on an easily proved material change in circumstances isn’t usually that expensive. Lawyers in my area will often do it for a $500 or $750 for the common client when proving income will not be difficult. Even more expensive lawyers usually don’t charge much more than $1,500 for the typical case. It can certainly cost more if calculating and proving income will be difficult and a lot of discovery will be required, but this sort of thing rarely costs what something like a custody battle would cost. It’s pretty straightforward stuff that more often than not is worked out by agreement without the necessity of a contested hearing. I’ve done several of these in the past and they usually don’t require much more than two or three hours work, if that, including the time spent in court. Obviously there are those odd exceptions, but generally these are some of the easiest and least expensive cases in family court. Most of the contested child support modifications I have had have taken less than 30 minutes to try. Judges will often set aside 15 minutes for these.
Thanks Roger, that helps a little bit, knowing what is driving this insanity.
The insanity is being driven by federal funding, around 10 billion a year last time I saw a reliable figure. It’s 100% pure American pork. I just love the way the two parties have agreed to substitute “ear marks” every time they talk about pork-barreling. They want to be sure that people don’t talk about biggest part of pork-barreling - the huge programs that go along year after year pumping money out of tax-payers’ pockets and out to the really successful organized criminals. At the end of the day, they’ll settle on the idea that “ear marks” are good for the states, and nobody should want to lose theirs.
Tell that to the mothers who block all contact between the fathers and their children.
You must live in a different country than I do. I live in the US. I've never heard of or read of any mother told to go to work by a family court judge. Not since 1978 anyway.
That's not just Florida, it is the law of the land. You're referring to Social Security IV-D cases. Its a gift from Bill Clinton. Any woman no matter how much money she has or earns can apply for FREE legal aid for any CS matters. There is no means test involved. She just has to have at custody of one minor child and cough up that $25 as an application fee. Meanwhile Dad has to pay for his attorney IF he can afford one. And feminists call this "equality."
Ever heard of welfare reform? The person left to care for the child is also required to go to work and put the child(ren) in daycare.
The least an unemployed parent could do is provide the childcare while the other parent works for pay. That way, more of the earned money AND the welfare would go to support the child instead of be spent on out-of-home childcare costs.
Usually it isn't expensive for the mother. Not so for the father. Besides that I've never heard of a recent case where a father got his support *lowered* for any reason. Not for being laid off, not for being injured on the job or off, not for getting sick, not for being a victim of a flood, fire or hurricane...not for any reason.
Reason being the judges and CSA's work together. Keeping support orders high enables the state to get more federal kickbacks. The state can spend that money on anything they want to...they don't have to account for the money to anyone. Judges can't by law get kickbacks but they do benefit by receiving higher retirement benefits. You yourself admitted you hadn't practiced family law in a long time. Things have changed.
Welfare reform is the biggest hoax foisted on a gullible population in years. The precise terminology used was "ending welfare as we KNEW it." Welfare didn't end...it was morphed into different alphabet names (AFDC became TANF for example). Different people (Fathers) were targeted to foot the bill for it (it used to be the taxpayers at large).
You are talking about women only being allowed on the dole for 3 years during which they get free legal training (almost no men are eligible for this BTW). Then in a dream world these women will have to go to work. I hate to burst your bubble but a lot of them are now going from TANF to SSDI claiming they can't work due to things like alcoholism and drug abuse. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I will say though that every judge is different, as are child support lawyers. I suppose sometimes there might be a judge with a crazy agenda or some crazy feminist child support lawyer out to nail all men to the wall. What I see in my area though is that the child support enforcement lawyers are actually pretty reasonable and in many cases when they do there regular reviews of cases they've even asked for downward modification if that was really what was warranted. And with our local office the policy is not to go after large past support judgments in initial support orders. They feel like that if the noncustodial parent had have really wanted the support they'd have gone after the custodial parent in the beginning and not let months or years pass. Besides, if the ongoing support or past support judgments are too high it just makes their jobs harder, and some of them believe it or not are pretty fair and decent people.
Where I see things being hardest on noncustodial parents is in criminal court on criminal nonsupport charges. In civil court where they deal with these cases all the time judges here at least give people a lot of breaks. They see the same people all the time and they know how tough things are and they are just trying to collect as much support as possible without putting kids’ parents in jail all the time. In criminal court judges are trying to set examples and the last thing they want is to have to deal with the same faces over and over again. They see these people as any other criminal and they hammer them hard. I saw a judge a while back tell a lady whose support was $120 a week that if all she made was $120.67 she was by God to pay a $120 and live on the sixty seven cents. He didn't care if her income didn't warrant the support amount she was ordered to pay or if she couldn't afford a lawyer to get her support lowered, his job was to see that she followed the law and he was by gosh going to do just that. She'd been paying regularly, just not enough, and he put her in jail for ninety days. Most of the judges in civil court around here would have given her a break because at least she was paying something, unlike a lot of people.
I “admit” I haven't practiced family law in a long time? You make it sound like I'm trying to pull the wool over people's eyes or something. I'm just passing on my personal experience to add to the conversation here. Your mileage may vary. Things are different in different places.
People should support their own children Roger - I don’t understand why you don’t “get” that...
most did, only to have a the relationship fall appart.
In the courts you see infidelity, and dreams attacked.
You also have situations where it is just inconcievable that two people had ANYTHING in common enough to be married.
Of course those are divorce cases where marriage preceeded the babies.
Before passing judgement spend a day in a judges divorce hearing calendar call.
Here is where the author missed the point.
There are federal matching funds for the ORDERED support, not the actual support.
There is no incentive to legislate retroactive correction or any such NORMAL accomodation.
Lose a job? the law says the support stays at the high level until you go back before the judge who assumes father’s are lying. This can and does take MONTHS. In the mean time the federal trough keeps flowing.
by the time the father gets in front of the judge months later the judge DEMANDS “why didn’t you get just ANY job?”.
Instead of finding a replacement at equal pay and the required search, the judge demands the father/checkbook keep everyone in poverty just to satisfy the judge’s black robe fever.
The matching dollar formula has to be fixed.
You also have to address the issue of PRIVATE attorneys being paid a bounty for recovering back support. Essentially no bid contracts using lawyers as collection agencies.
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