Woman Tries to Collect Child Support on Adult Children

A woman in California recently tried to collect back child support for her adult children, who are now over 30 years old. However, a judge declared that she could not ask for the payments from the father. The reasoning was that the woman actually made it impossible for the man to pay his child support payments on time, as he had been doing, because she took steps to hide the children so that he could not find them.

After their divorce, the man paid child support as he was ordered to do for about two months. He had to give her $70 for each one of the children, and records indicate that he did not miss those payments.

However, after the two months were up, the mother and the children left California. She did not tell the man where she was going. She even went so far as to have the children’s names changed. Therefore, the man did not know where his children were or how to locate the mother, and he stopped making his child support payments.

The lawsuit that was shot down by the judge asked for over $90,000 in payments, even though the children were already well past the age of 18. Since the father had not even so much as laid eyes on his children for around 15 years, due to the actions of the mother, he was not ordered to pay.

Often, a judge will declare that someone who failed to provide child support has to make back payments. However, it is important for anyone who wants to look into a lawsuit of this type to understand what they need to do to make it possible for the father to provide those payments.

Source: Courthouse News Service, “No Arrears for Mom Who Hid Kids, Now Grown” Jeff D. Gorman, May. 06, 2014