Keep Records Of All Child Support Payments
Video Transcribed: My name is Jason Lile, and I am a Fathers Rights Attorney in Tulsa. If you’re paying child support, can you just pay in cash?
Or, if another parent calls you up and says, “Don’t pay the child support this month, I just need my car payment paid,” or, “I need my electrical bill paid,” or, “My cell phone bill paid.” Does that count?
The simple answer is you need to cover your behind. If you’re paying an alternate way for child support, for example, the example that I used, if the other parent calls you up and says, “Just go ahead and pay my cell phone bill this month,” or, “My car payment.”
I will tell you that I had a tragic case economically for my client, where he engaged in this practice with the baby’s mother for years. And then she one day sued him for child support, saying that he hadn’t paid child support for almost a decade.
But in reality, we had all of the bank records and all the receipts that said, “No, look, I paid her car payment and her phone payment, and all these things.”
Unfortunately, there was no proof that she accepted these instead of child support; those were mostly verbal things. And the judge said, “Without direct evidence that she was accepting this money instead of child support, it was just a gift.” He got no credit for all that money he had paid for those various other things, all those years; he was dinged with 10 years worth of child support arrears, plus interest.
What does that mean for you? If you are going to do that, let’s say you’re asked to pay a car payment instead of child support, you need to get it in writing somewhere. If you pay with a check or a credit card, or nowadays with Venmo or Cash app, you need to have a memo in that form of payment that says, “For child support, paying car payment for child support” or whatever it is, or just put child support on it. That’s sufficient evidence. The judge was just saying, “Nope. Yeah, you accepted this as child support.”
And if it’s cash, then obviously, you have the same problem with anybody accepting cash, which is you need a receipt, and you need that receipt to say, “This was child support.” If you don’t get that, you are unprotected after the fact to be able to claim that it was child support.
Yes, you can pay your child support with cash. You can pay your child support by paying other things in kind, but you must document that properly. If you have any questions about family law matters or need a Child Custody Attorney for Dads in Tulsa, Ok, or a Tulsa Child Support Attorney For Fathers, please contact dads.law.
