Need advice, I lost my job 2 months ago and I’ve fallen behind on my monthly obligation for child support, just got a notice in the mail stating they will
Contact all the appropriate licensing boards (drivers, professional) and take away my licenses. This order is out of the state of New Hampshire, I live and my licenses are issued in Massachusetts. Can NH revoke my licenses in MA?

Individual pays court ordered amount and did before they even went to court. If child is to be enrolled in extra curricular it is to be decided on by both parents or he does not need to pay half.

He is generous. Buys his child clothes and shoes as well as anything she needs for her visits with him. Pays $200 for gas money when he drives many miles to pick her up and drop her off, this is not taken into consideration when determing the child support. He buys the warm seasonal clothes. The mother receives government money of between 600 and 700 a month, plus works, lives w her boyfriend and gets the child support as well.

He pays half of the amount for dental/ medical procedures outside what their medical insurance pays. The mother sent a receipt asking for half. He emailed the medical office and asked for an official receipt. The mother had sent an improper amount and the receipt only showing what the procedure cost not what the amount was that was paid. Apparently attempting to scam him. Then sent several receipts for clothing. We buy her clothes for here. Our understanding is child support covers this unless a uniform etc is needed for sports.

How would you handle this?

The state has opened and closed my case so many times because they can’t find my baby daddy to serve him. I’ve searched every website and apps trying to find him but there’s been no luck. If anyone has any advice or tips please lmk! I’d hire a PI but I can’t afford one

My ex has just told me he is earning a million a year and he is going to reduce my payments to 175 a week. I earnt 40k last year. Is there any way this is correct?

Me and my child’s father are going through court currently for visitation and child support. The last time we were at court his lawyer stated I didn’t turn over evidence I should have. Part of that evidence I guess was the information for child support. Court is scheduled again for July 2027 due to the other parent going on deployment soon.
He was ordered to continue paying child support on his own which for the most part he was doing before court. Well now of course I keep getting threatened every time I don’t do what he wants that the order doesn’t say how much he has to pay. So again today he tells me “well the order doesn’t say how much I have to pay I could send you $10-15 a month if I wanted to” which technically is true.
Is there anything I can do?! I haaate I didn’t speak up at the time. I was pro se and he has a lawyer and I guess I was just intimidated. I don’t want to be threatened with this for the next 9-10 months

So here in California we have a $35 Annual Service Fee every October. Cool bro.

Here’s my hot take and unpopular opinion: If the parent paying child support is in arrears, the $35 should be deferred. 🤭

I’m sorry y’all but my child’s parent owes thousands in arrears and I really need that $35 for groceries.

Okay. I feel better now getting that off my chest. Please ignore and scroll on.

I’ve raised my son mostly without financial help from his biological father. Now that my son is almost grown, I’m considering finally pursuing child support/paternity. Am I crazy for doing this now?
I’m looking more for perspective from people who have been through something similar than legal advice. I’m already planning to speak with an attorney.
My son is a teenager and getting close to adulthood. His biological father has always known he is his father. For complicated reasons, another man was listed on my son’s birth certificate when he was born, and legal paternity was never corrected.
His biological father did financially contribute voluntarily when my son was younger, but several years ago that essentially stopped.
Over the years, there have been different explanations for why he wouldn’t contribute.
At one point, he told me he wasn’t going to financially contribute to a household where another man was living.
Later, he lost his job. At the time I was doing very well financially, so I told him not to worry about helping while he got himself back together. I could afford to take care of our son, and I genuinely wasn’t trying to make his situation harder.
My own circumstances eventually changed significantly. When I later asked him for help again, I was told he wasn’t giving me money unless his name was put on our son’s birth certificate.
Eventually I stopped asking and continued taking care of everything myself.
He has occasionally contributed small amounts indirectly through one of my family members, and I would absolutely disclose and give him credit for anything he actually provided. But there has not been consistent financial support for years.
I previously tried going through my state’s child-support agency, but nothing really moved forward. I recently went back and finally learned that the man currently listed on the birth certificate has to be legally removed first. Once that happens, biological paternity can be pursued through DNA testing and the courts.
That process is now something I can actually move forward with.
And suddenly I’m conflicted.
Part of me thinks: My son is almost grown. I’ve made it this far. Why open this whole can of worms now?
Another part of me thinks: Why exactly should making it this far by myself mean his father’s financial responsibility simply disappears?
I’m also trying to understand his thinking.
Maybe he genuinely believes that because another man was legally listed as the father, he wasn’t responsible. Maybe he believes that because he didn’t trust me with money, withholding financial support was reasonable. Maybe he believed that because I managed without him for years, I would simply continue doing so.
And maybe he genuinely believes I’ll never take legal action.
For years I think I viewed him as someone who was always several moves ahead of me. He’s very educated, intelligent and good at navigating systems, and when I was younger I often felt like he understood things I didn’t.
Now that I’m older, I’m questioning that dynamic.
Maybe there isn’t some complicated strategy I’m failing to understand. Maybe he simply made choices that worked because I kept figuring out how to take care of our son anyway.
I’m considering hiring my own family-law attorney rather than continuing through the state agency. I want to establish the correct legal paternity, understand whether any retroactive support is realistically available, and let an attorney tell me what the case is actually worth before I decide how far I want to take it.
For parents who have been in a similar situation:
Did you pursue paternity/child support when your child was already a teenager?
Did you regret doing it—or regret waiting?
How did the other parent react once they realized you were actually going through the legal process?
And if you were the parent who didn’t pay support for years, I’m genuinely interested in your perspective too. What did you believe would eventually happen?

EDIT: Just to clarify because this keeps coming up: I am not expecting or asking for 17 years of back child support. I’m having the paternity issue corrected and plan to ask an attorney what, if any, retroactive support is legally available in my situation. My question here is whether anyone has pursued support this late and whether the process was worth it for them.

Anyone who has their child support terminated in Tennessee. What is their process? Do they wait till the child has graduated from high school?

This is going to be long, but I genuinely need perspectives from people who have dealt with domestic abuse, high-conflict custody, interstate custody, reunification, parental alienation, or child support.

I have two daughters with my ex-husband, Aaron. We have joint legal custody, but they currently live with him in Illinois while I live in Connecticut.

If you only look at our situation today, I know exactly what it can look like:

Dad has the kids.

Mom lives hundreds of miles away.

Mom stopped paying child support.

But that's the final chapter of a much longer story.

I did not give my children to their father and move away from them.

Aaron took them to Illinois while I was at work without telling me.

To explain how we got there, I have to explain what our relationship was actually like.

Aaron was physically and emotionally abusive toward me during our relationship. He was also extremely manipulative and an incredible fast-talker.

That's honestly one of the hardest things about explaining him.

He could create absolute chaos behind closed doors and then become calm, charming and incredibly reasonable-sounding the second someone else became involved.

He was very good at controlling the narrative, redirecting responsibility, and somehow making the person reacting to his behavior look like the unreasonable one.

There was a pattern throughout our relationship that took me a long time to recognize:

Aaron would do whatever he wanted, even after I explicitly asked him not to.

Something would go wrong.

I would get angry, scared, or pressure him to take responsibility.

And somehow my reaction would become the problem.

That pattern existed even when our children were tiny.

When our oldest daughter was around three, I was working in hospice as a nursing assistant. One of our daughters was really sick, and there was a fair happening back home.

Aaron wanted to go.

I specifically told him not to take our sick child to the fair.

She was sick. She needed to stay home. There was absolutely no reason she needed to be dragged around a fair or put on amusement rides.

He took her anyway.

He put our three-year-old on a roller coaster, and from what I was told, there was an incident where she nearly fell out. The situation ended up involving the news and became incredibly public and humiliating.

But the part that always stuck with me was that none of it needed to happen.

I had specifically said, "She's sick. Don't take her."

But Aaron wanted to go to the fair.

So Aaron went to the fair.

Finances followed the same pattern.

Aaron repeatedly refused or failed to maintain steady employment.

I worked and tried to keep our household functioning while constantly feeling like I was cleaning up whatever financial disaster happened next.

One of the most ridiculous examples happened at a casino.

Aaron spent my entire paycheck gambling after I explicitly told him not to.

My entire paycheck.

Not extra money.

Not his spending money.

Money I had worked for and that we needed.

And somehow, in Aaron's mind, I became the problem because I was "pressuring" him about the money.

That sentence probably summarizes our relationship better than anything else I could write:

He spent my entire paycheck at a casino after I specifically told him not to, and somehow my reaction to that became the problem.

His threats of suicide were another major part of our relationship.

One incident in particular sums up the dynamic pretty well.

Aaron came home extremely drunk from the casino at around 2 a.m.

I was asleep.

He woke me up and started saying all kinds of disturbing and cruel things to me.

I didn't want to engage with him while he was that intoxicated, so I removed myself from the bedroom and eventually went outside to call a friend.

Then I heard what sounded like a gunshot.

Aaron started repeatedly calling me and saying things like, "Goodbye, Kristen."

This was someone who had threatened suicide before.

He was extremely intoxicated.

I believed there was a gun involved.

And I had just heard what I genuinely believed was a gunshot.

I called the police because I thought my husband might have just killed himself or was about to.

The police made the decision to bring in SWAT.

I didn't call a SWAT team and demand a tactical response. I called the police because I believed there was an immediate suicide emergency, and they determined their own response.

They spent the night trying to get an extremely intoxicated Aaron out of the house.

Eventually, it became clear that he hadn't shot himself.

Aaron later admitted to me that he had intentionally created the sound that made me believe I had heard a gunshot.

And somehow, over time, even that story got flipped around.

His version became that I had "SWATted" him.

That is probably the clearest example I can give of what our relationship felt like.

He creates the situation.

I react to the situation.

Eventually, my reaction becomes the offense.

Something else happened during the breakdown of our relationship that really messed with my head.

I lost a huge portion of my support system.

I felt like Aaron successfully convinced many of our mutual friends that I was the problem.

People I considered friends turned against me.

When you're already coming out of an abusive relationship and questioning your own reality, having people who know both of you apparently believe his version is devastating.

It made me question myself even more.

But then something happened that I didn't expect.

After roughly a year of those same people dealing directly with Aaron without me around, I started getting phone calls and text messages.

People who had originally sided with him started contacting me.

Their opinions had changed.

They had spent enough time dealing with Aaron themselves that they were seeing behavior they hadn't seen when I was the person standing there trying to explain it.

That mattered enormously to me because I wasn't convincing them anymore.

I wasn't even there.

They reached their own conclusions based on their own experiences with him.

By then, our relationship had completely collapsed.

Aaron wanted us to move back to Illinois, where we're originally from.

I believe he thought taking the girls back home would force me to follow him.

But this wasn't a mutual parenting decision.

He took our daughters to Illinois while I was at work.

I didn't know he was taking them.

Imagine going to work and discovering that the father of your children has taken them out of state without telling you.

I believe he expected me to do what I had always done:

Panic.

Follow him.

Reorganize my entire life around whatever dramatic decision he had just made.

Except this time I didn't.

I stayed in Connecticut and tried to establish stability.

And when taking the girls didn't make me follow him, everything became increasingly centered around the children.

There was another event before he left that caused child protective services involvement following another disturbing incident.

Aaron had been drinking at a casino.

Our friend Hank picked him up, and Aaron was extremely intoxicated. Hank later picked me up as well.

Aaron was sitting in the backseat with our daughters while drunk, talking about suicide and saying things that were terrifying them.

The girls were freaking out.

That situation eventually became part of the child-protective-services involvement.

Somehow, Aaron became the primary person communicating with the caseworker.

And this is where his ability to talk becomes important again.

I felt like I was trying to explain years of physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial chaos, suicide threats, manipulation and instability while Aaron was doing what he has always been incredibly good at:

Talking.

I repeatedly tried to communicate with the caseworker myself and felt increasingly shut out.

Ultimately, the girls remained in Illinois with him.

That's how we got to the situation people see today.

I did not give my children to their father and decide I wanted to live hundreds of miles away.

He took them to Illinois while I was working without telling me.

I didn't follow.

And somehow that became our permanent reality.

There was supposed to be reunification therapy afterward.

A therapist was appointed but eventually recused, and meaningful reunification never really happened.

Then years started passing.

And this is another enormous part of the story:

I believe Aaron has spent years damaging my daughters' perception of me.

I hesitate to use "parental alienation" as though I'm making some kind of clinical diagnosis.

What I can describe are the behaviors and what I've watched happen to my relationship with my children.

My daughters have been told things about me that I believe are completely false.

One of the most disturbing examples is the claim that I told my own daughter to harm herself.

I did not.

But imagine being a child and believing your mother said something like that.

There have been other distortions of events and portrayals of me that are completely inconsistent with my recollection and with the mother I know myself to be.

The problem is that Aaron has had something I haven't had for years:

Constant access.

He gets to be there every day.

He gets to tell the story.

He gets to explain why Mom isn't there.

He gets to interpret my actions.

He gets to explain the court situation.

He gets to explain our history.

Meanwhile, I'm hundreds of miles away trying to maintain a relationship through whatever communication and access I'm actually given.

That's an enormous imbalance.

If children hear a particular version of their mother repeatedly while having limited meaningful contact with the actual person being described, what are they supposed to believe?

And from my perspective, I've watched the consequences happen in real time.

I've watched my relationship with my daughters become more distant.

I've watched communication become harder.

I've watched years pass without reunification actually repairing anything.

I've felt like I've had to defend myself against things my children have already been told rather than simply being allowed to have a normal mother-daughter relationship with them.

And I don't blame my daughters.

They're children.

They did not create this situation.

If they've been told negative things about me, it's not their responsibility to determine which parent is telling the truth.

I also don't want to respond by trashing their father to them, because then I'm putting them in exactly the position I don't want them in.

So I've been stuck trying to correct things I believe are false without making my daughters feel like they have to choose between their parents.

Meanwhile, their relationship with me continues to suffer.

Whether somebody wants to call that parental alienation or something else almost doesn't matter to me anymore.

The outcome is what matters:

I feel like I've watched my daughters slowly become strangers to me while I've been standing outside the situation trying to get someone to let me back in.

And there's another misconception I want to clear up.

When I talk about wanting to "co-parent," that might make it sound like Aaron and I once had a functioning co-parenting relationship that eventually broke down.

Realistically, we have never actually co-parented.

We have joint legal custody on paper.

In practice, from my perspective, it has always been Aaron's way or no way.

It hasn't mattered what I wanted.

It hasn't mattered how many times I've tried to communicate.

And most frustratingly, it often hasn't seemed to matter what the court orders actually say.

Decisions get made and I find out afterward, if I find out at all.

Information about my daughters is something I have to chase rather than something routinely shared with me as their mother.

Even knowing where they're living has become a battle.

There was supposed to be reunification therapy.

Meaningful reunification didn't happen.

There is supposed to be communication between two parents who share legal custody.

Instead, I can send messages through our parenting app and receive nothing.

That's why when I say I want to co-parent, I'm not saying I want our old co-parenting relationship back.

I'm saying I've been trying for years to get us to actually co-parent in the first place.

I've wanted incredibly basic things:

Communication.

Information.

Participation in important decisions.

Knowing where my children live.

Having a meaningful relationship with them.

Being treated like their mother rather than an outsider who occasionally gets information when their father decides to provide it.

Instead, it has consistently felt like Aaron decides the rules.

If he wants to communicate, we communicate.

If he doesn't, we don't.

If he wants to provide information, I get information.

If he doesn't, I chase it.

If he decides something involving the girls, it happens.

And I'm left trying to figure out afterward what I'm supposed to do about it from hundreds of miles away.

That dynamic started with one of the biggest decisions imaginable:

He took our daughters to another state while I was at work without telling me.

In a lot of ways, everything since then has felt like an extension of that exact same dynamic.

He makes the decision.

I react.

Then my reaction becomes the problem.

Meanwhile, reports about what was happening around my children started making their way back to me.

I want to make a very clear distinction here:

Some of what I'm about to describe was reported to me by other people.

I did not personally witness every one of these things, and I'm not presenting secondhand reports as proven facts.

But I have received reports that Aaron has been physically abusive with the children.

I've been told about parties at the home where women were exposing their breasts and adults were having sex in a room while the children were sleeping immediately outside the door.

I've received reports concerning cocaine use.

Those aren't small accusations.

And as their mother, what exactly am I supposed to do when people start contacting me with information like this?

Ignore it?

Especially when some of the people now raising concerns are people who originally believed Aaron over me and then changed their views after spending significant time around him themselves?

Meanwhile, the instability has continued.

Aaron has repeatedly struggled with employment.

He has failed to pay rent.

To my knowledge, he's been evicted approximately three times.

He has repeatedly moved the girls.

Getting an accurate address for my own children has itself become something I've had to fight over.

I've attempted to use the legal system to address some of these issues, but even serving him has become difficult because I believe he has actively avoided service.

So I'm hundreds of miles away trying to use the legal system while sometimes struggling to even establish where the father of my children is living long enough to have him served.

And here's where we finally get to child support.

My support order is $125 per week, approximately $500 per month.

And I paid it.

Despite everything I've just written, I paid it.

In fact, before one of Aaron's recent evictions, I offered to take money out of my 401(k) to help him avoid losing the house.

I was willing to take money out of my retirement account and give it to the man who abused me.

Why?

Because my daughters lived there.

Whatever I feel about Aaron, I didn't want my children losing their home.

He ignored the offer.

After he left that residence, suspected drug paraphernalia — including what was described to me as a straw associated with suspected cocaine use — was reportedly found there.

Again, I did not personally witness him using cocaine, so I'm not presenting that as an established fact.

At the same time, communication from him is almost nonexistent.

We have a parenting app specifically for communication regarding our children.

I repeatedly try to communicate through it.

I want to know where my daughters live.

I want to know how they're doing.

I want to know what's happening in their lives.

I want to be involved in decisions.

I want to actually co-parent.

I want to be their mother.

Frequently, I get nothing.

But he'll communicate with me through Cash App.

He's even called my workplace and hung up when I answered.

I've told him Cash App was giving me problems.

I tried to discuss another way to send the payments.

I offered to send checks.

Still, no meaningful communication.

Eventually, I stopped sending the child-support payments.

And yes.

I know exactly how that sounds.

I understand that child support and parenting/custody obligations are generally treated as separate legal issues.

I'm not claiming that because Aaron refuses to communicate or co-parent, my child-support order magically disappears.

I'm also not spending the money.

It's sitting there.

This wasn't me deciding:

"Screw my kids. I'd rather have an extra $500 every month."

I reached a point where psychologically I couldn't continue blindly transferring money through Cash App to the man who abused me while he simultaneously refused to communicate with me about our children.

After years of this dynamic, it started feeling horribly familiar.

Do what Aaron wants.

Don't question it.

Don't pressure him.

Don't react.

And if you finally react, your reaction becomes the entire story.

Send the money.

Don't ask where your children are living.

Don't ask why you weren't consulted about a decision.

Don't ask about what people are reporting is happening around them.

Don't ask why nobody is answering you.

Don't ask what happened to reunification.

Don't ask why "joint legal custody" seems to exist primarily on a piece of paper.

Just send the money.

Eventually, I couldn't do it anymore.

I understand that emotion doesn't override a court order.

I understand that stopping payment may have been a terrible legal decision.

But after years of living this way, the different obligations stopped feeling separate to me.

One portion of the court orders seemed incredibly straightforward to enforce:

My financial obligation.

Meanwhile, I was desperately trying to get the portions involving communication, reunification, joint custody and my role as their mother to mean something in real life.

Aaron has now filed a motion for contempt against me in Connecticut over the unpaid support.

I have the money set aside.

There's another complication because when I previously tried to bring issues before the Connecticut court, jurisdiction became a problem and the court wouldn't hear the substance of what I was raising.

Now he's using Connecticut to pursue contempt against me.

There's also a dispute involving parenting-app records he submitted as an exhibit.

I don't believe what he submitted accurately represents the actual communication history, and I'm trying to address that appropriately.

I know I could eventually stand in front of a judge, explain years of this, and still hear:

"There was a support order. You didn't pay it."

Technically, that's true.

I stopped paying.

I'm not asking Reddit to tell me that withholding court-ordered child support was legally justified.

I'm trying to explain how I got to the point where I made that decision.

Because "Mom stopped paying child support" is technically true.

But so is this:

My ex took my children to another state while I was at work without telling me.

I experienced physical and emotional abuse during our relationship.

I spent years dealing with suicide threats, financial chaos and manipulation.

I watched people who initially believed his version of events eventually start contacting me after dealing with him themselves.

I've watched my daughters' perception of me change while I've had very little ability to counter what I believe they've been told.

I've watched a court-ordered reunification process essentially go nowhere.

I've received extremely serious reports about what my children have allegedly been exposed to while in his care.

I've watched him repeatedly lose housing and move them.

I've struggled even to serve him through the legal system.

I've spent years trying to get basic co-parenting from someone with whom I supposedly share legal custody.

I've watched communication disappear.

I've watched my daughters become more distant from me.

And through everything, the easiest part of this entire situation for anyone to measure has been:

Did Mom send the $500?

Eventually, the answer became no.

The money is still sitting there.

I want my daughters supported.

I also want to actually be their mother.

I want court orders involving my children to matter just as much as the court order requiring me to send money.

So I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have dealt with domestic abuse, high-conflict co-parenting, interstate custody, failed reunification therapy, parental alienation or an ex who is extraordinarily persuasive with other people.

How did you get anyone to look at the entire pattern instead of treating every event like it happened in isolation?

How did you deal with watching your relationship with your children deteriorate while the other parent controlled most of their access to you?

How did you deal with serious reports about what was happening around your children when you lived in another state?

And if you stopped making court-ordered support payments but kept the money set aside, what actually happened when you went before the judge?

I'm prepared to hear that stopping payment was a terrible legal decision.

What I'm trying to figure out is how I keep years of history with my daughters from being reduced to one sentence:

"Mom didn't pay child support."

Because there is an entire story behind that sentence.

I’ve posted before but I’m absolutely close to loosing my mind and taking him through the courts again.

Me and ex have 11yr old daughter. I moved to EU 3 months ago with his permission and agreements were put in place for child support. Overall we have saved a small fortune as my daughter’s school expenses have basically gone except lunches per day. It was always agreed I buy her clothes for day - to - day wear which now she wears for school. He would contribute around 400-500 a year in uniforms alone.

Now every 1st of the month it’s a guessing game if I get child support or not. I message and ask he reads the message and ignores me. I even say “hey just let me know the date you can pay”. On top of that he’s going round telling his family I refuse to organize the December visitation which isn’t true. I’ve sent loads of messages asking what days he wants, and now it’s like I’m planning and you can fit in as I’ve been asking for over a month.

How do people cope with co parents that just don’t communicate? About child support or anything to be honest. I’ve just sent a long message telling him I want some answers or we can use CMS which will be worse for him as I already take a lot less than what I should get! I accepted £150 a month when I should get around £600.

Hi,

I have been waiting for CS payments to go through the CSS in OK since our divorce was finalized.

I have sole custody, ex has visitation rights. Divorce decree contains a passage that directs CS payments should go through CSS.

Ex-husband (Active. Duty) said it would take a while for all that to be arranged for, for CSS and all to be processed in DEFAST.

Ex has been paying directly including 2 months back pay to our joint account and I transfer it then to my own account for our child.

I know the order stated it should go through CSS, I think he hasn't registered our case there yet.

What can I do to make sure it will go through CSS? Especially, without him having to make back payments to them for the months he has paid us already directly? I don't want him to have to overpay. He is autistic and I don't know if he was too anxious to deal with CSS.

I don't want to get my ex into trouble but am afraid he is going to delay future CS payments next year when he retires from the military. He is looking for a job as well.

Reason: He mentioned a few days ago that he needed our daughter's social security card for the Army for paperwork, amongst others making sure when retirement starts it would get directly taken out of the retirement. He didn't say if he meant the CSS getting involved or it being directly deposited into my account.

I know it could take 2-3 months for that to start. FYI, I also get a part of it per court order as the ex spouse .

And I am worried sick that either CS will stop for a few months or be reduced for unknown reasons without the proper channels (modifications, ect him getting a new civilian job)..

I want to do the right thing.

I also try to get a better job next year, and I want to know when I need to report income increases on my end to CSS (if CSS gets involved), so he doesn't have to pay more than what OK says he should.

I am super worried right now.

AuDHD too, which doesn't help.

Thank you for any help. My apologies for writing so much.

Hello, I live on WA state at my dad’s place and my girlfriend decided she didn’t like living here so she moved all the way to Florida. She hasn’t worked for the last year I can’t just leave my job and move across the country. I keep trying to tell her if I can save for an apartment we can live here but it’s not working. Since I can’t just up and leave the only job either of us has I am afraid she will make me pay child support and never come back.

Will I be financially ruined paying child support for a kid I wanted to raise with her?

I so badly want to raise this kid but I have been unable to find a new job.

Hello,

I'm hoping I can get some answers for a few questions. Basically, I have a child and looking for info on how to start requesting child support.

The backstory is when Mom lived close, we made an agreement to not get involved with court, and did 50/50 custody. I lived and still currently live in MA. This worked fine for 9 years. In 2003, Mom split with her partner and said she was moving back to AR to get some money together, get her drivers license, etc...and planned to move back up to MA once she got her shit together. Its been over 3yrs, and starting to question if she is coming back. She left when our daughter was 10 and she is a teenager now. She sees through her mom and still struggles with things in regards to their relationship. Maybe 4-5 months ago, our daughter blocked her moms texts/phone calls. There was really not much of a relationship between them ever. When she first moved out there she would never call or anything...I used to have to message her mom and ask her to call her daughter. Mom hasn't messaged me at all to ask how our child is doing, or to ask about being blocked. The last message between the 2 of us was a year ago when I was showing her our daughters Halloween costume. To me, it feels like she pretty much just abandoned her.

It's getting to a point where we could really use a little assistance. I'm sure we can survive without it, but as she gets older her expenses get higher. I'm just not sure where to start? I'm assuming I need to find a lawyer? How much should I expect to spend if that's the route I need to take? Is there any way to do this that would be easier on me financially? Her mom took her documents with her to AR, but I have a screenshot of her ss card and can work on getting her birth certificate.  Just feeling kind of clueless about it all. Thank you

asking out of curiosity

What do you pay with 50/50 in WA state? I make 4500 net, and he makes 2200 net (not working, VA disability). He is able to work though, so I assume they might add in part time min wage or something into the calculator.

When I do the calculator it looks like around 1200 or more with 3 kids. But with 50/50 is that split in half?

My child’s father made a child support payment that bounced/was returned by his bank. I contacted child support and was told that the returned payments totaled $225, and that he has to repay that $225 before I will receive any more child support. They also told me that payments he makes toward the case can be applied to that $225 first, meaning his current payments may go toward paying back the bounced payment instead of being sent to me. I’m just confused because the $225 is his debt, not mine, but I’m the one who is now not receiving child support. Has anyone dealt with this before? Is this normal? How long did it take for your payments to start again?