Not necessarily. If the mother goes on welfare, the county will automatically garnish the wages so that the child support goes to them first, then to the mother.
Maybe I should have said this would have never been an issue if divorced fathers actually supported their children.
I get that many do unfortunately many more do not.
“will automatically garnish the wages so that the child support goes to them first, then to the mother.”
Same in FL. State garnishes wages then waits a month or so to pay the recipient. All the while claiming to the payer that the payee is in arrears. It gets worse, much worse. “Two computer systems” “we can’t modify the payment system” etc. They would take from me and not give to her and play one against the other -just like the lawyers!. They’d tell her “he didn’t pay” and tell me “she filed a work order against you” even though I’d paid. It’s a real scam the state runs.
It’s set up with one agency to take the money and one agency to pay the money and they supposedly, according to them, don’t talk and have separate computer systems. Over a dozen ‘mistakes’ and every single one was to keep our money. That’s not coincidence, that’s corruption.
After ripping us off over $6500 beyond what was owed we had to go to our State Representative with the paperwork in order to get the state to pay out what they took and held. And I had to get a court order which took 18 months to receive credit.
All in all we got back $5000 so they got us for $1500 in the end. Now they have a law where you can’t dispute after 30-days -ridiculous.
My only advice is to use your state Rep. One day they’ll get tired and decide to change the laws and agency rules to save themselves the work.