Keep Accurate Track of What’s Going On
Video Transcribed: My name is Jason Lile, and I am a Men’s Rights lawyer in Oklahoma. I wanted to talk about how you keep track of child support. What’s paid, what needs to be paid, et cetera. So the simplest explanation is just to give you some idea of how the process works.
Once a child support order is entered by the district court where you are, that child support needs to be sent to the department of… Well, let’s back up a little bit. There are two options. The parties can choose to have that payment go from one party directly to the other party.
Suppose you’ve watched any of my other videos. In that case, you know that the party paying should be very careful to keep good records that way because that’s what they’ll need to defend themselves if they’re ever accused of not paying, and the party receiving also needs to keep good records. If they say they’ve been underpaid or not paid, they need to have a record of it.
The second option is an income assignment, which is where the court tells the payer’s employee, “Hey,” through an order, an income assignment order, “you need to withdraw this child support directly out of this person’s bank account and, one of two things, either send it to the other party or the Department of Human Services is involved.”
When DHS is involved, which is often the case, one of their main functions in Oklahoma is collecting child support. If you need them to, they will collect the child support through an income assignment and direct payment from the other party, capture it, keep a record of what was paid, and take any out if it needs to be taken out for the state of Oklahoma.
It might if they’re on Sooner Care, the other party has to reimburse them for Sooner Care or any other form of state assistance and then send the remainder to the recipient. It’s usually placed on a card with an account, and you can use it just like a debit card.
So all that to say, if the Department of Human Services is keeping track, they will say that they have accurate records. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.
You may need a lawyer to buck against the Department of Human Services and say, “No, not correct.” You should know that the district court’s determination about the record overrides the Department of Human Services, so if you need a record being corrected one way or another, you might need the help of a lawyer to do that against the Department of Human Services.
Also, suppose DHS has been collecting child support. In that case, you, as one of the parties, should be able to contact them and get what we call a consolidated record of payment that shows all the payments that they’ve received, what they think is supposed to be being paid, whether or not there’s an arrearage, which just means unpaid child support, how much interest has been accrued, all of these things.
So there are many ways you can do it, but when it comes to child support, it’s important to keep accurate track of what’s going on and if you have any questions about that or any other family law matters. If you have any questions about family law matters or need an Oklahoma Child Custody Attorney for Dads or an Oklahoma Child Support Attorney For Fathers, please contact dads.law.
