You Can Spend Up to Six Months in Jail
Video Transcribed: Hello, my name is Jason Lile and I am a Father’s attorney in Tulsa. I wanted to talk to you today about a topic that I get asked about more than probably any other topic when I’m representing men in paternity cases, divorce cases, child support cases, and post-decree cases.
And that is child support. It’s often the case that my male clients will make the mistake of correlating the fact that they’re not getting to see their child enough or not getting to see their children according to an order or an informal agreement with the other parent and child support.
They will say to me, “I’m not going to pay because I am not getting to see my child.” This is something that gets you into big trouble right away. Child support and the lack of payment is a matter of criminal contempt. You can go to jail for not paying your child support.
You can spend up to six months in jail. You can be made to pay attorneys’ fees if an action to enforce child support is brought against you. They’re just a lot of consequences of not paying your child support.
One thing that is a huge benefit to hiring an experienced attorney for your paternity divorce or post tore action is to make sure that child support is created under a calculator that’s accurate. It’s also important that the inputs into that calculator realistically represent your income. If you are a W2 employee, that’s fairly simple.
The standard is the gross income per month. But if you are self-employed, that can be more complicated. You need to address equitable arguments, which just means fairness with regard to deviations that are possible.
The calculator will spit out one number, but the parties are allowed to agree on deviations. You need to be fairly and aggressively represented when it comes to back child support. A lot of times, fathers are presented with debts to say, “Well, you owe back child support.”
And an attorney should aggressively review that claim, and see if that’s accurate. And if it is, a good attorney should be able to procure you a payment plan that you can live with so you don’t fall behind on your other child support payments and get yourself out of jeopardy of criminal contempt.
And finally, it’s not a foreground conclusion that you, as the father, have to pay child support. It’s possible that the other parents should be paying the child support. This is, again, one of the benefits of hiring an experienced family law attorney that they could look at these issues with child support, I assure you, because the consequences are big.
And if you’d like to know more about this, or you’re looking for representation in your divorce case, your paternity case, or your post-decree matter, and if you’d like to know anything else about this, feel free to contact me the Tulsa Child Support Attorney For Men at dads.law.
