Hi, to start I am not the man in the situation. I am his wife. We just recently went through a very stressful situation involving child support and I wanted to share in the hopes that someone doesn’t ever make the mistake of paying child support incorrectly (my husband did not, but I’ll go into the details here soon).

A couple of weeks ago my husband unexpectedly received a letter from the attorney general’s office claiming that he is in $20,000 worth of child support arrears. This came as a huge shock since he has always paid child support on time and in the full amount for the past 5 years. He called up his ex wife, whom he does not get along with for reasons that would take an hour to explain, and told her that he got a letter that he knows nothing about and if she happens to know why he got this. She said she doesn’t know what it’s about and knows he’s always paid, however she admitted she recently went into the child support office to get his wages reviewed for an increase in child support. Now we knew this would potentially happen because my husband said all during their marriage she refused to work or go back to school and was a generally lazy person. She eventually started working from home for her friend part time as an assistant but her income is low and my husband suspected she hasn’t done much to improve her financial situation since they separated. He was right. She ended up saying how she can’t pay her bills and how she never takes vacations like we do. Money is tight because “I don’t have a husband” and when my husband asked what she plans on doing in 7 years when the over $1,000/month of child support is gone she said verbatim “I’ll live under a bridge”. She also mentioned how he got to keep his pension and the house (which he bought her out of) but that was completely irrelevant to the $20,000 arrears issue. She told him she would call the office the next day and they hung up. The next morning my husband calls the office and they explain that the arrears is from 2015-2016 before they started garnishing wages through the OAG. He had paid his ex wife by personal checks during that time and had the bank statements to prove it. They said it’s his lawyer’s fault for not explaining that he had to pay through them and any other money paid is technically considered a gift. They said it could be cleared if they both sign an affidavit acknowledging the payments. So my husband spends ALL day trying to get his ex wife to fill out the form. She sent him one text saying “the child support office has all the info you need” and proceeds to ignore his calls for the rest of the day. We are sitting there wondering why she wouldn’t just sign this knowing he has proof of payments. Later the next day it hits my husband remembers that the year they’re saying he’s in arrears was during their separation - not their divorce. It was an entirely different court order. He digs it out and finds the section where it explicitly says he MUST pay her directly and that the OAG shall not be involved unless there is delinquency. It hits us that this entire time she’s been ignoring him because she must have called the child support office also and they told her the same thing; he owes $20,000 and anything else given was a gift. So she didn’t care if he had proof of payment, she could argue it was a gift. She was willing to take double payments. We hired a lawyer and after a week they managed to get the OAG to contact her and get her to finally sign the affidavit, meanwhile we had to pay for legal assistance and do all of the work to clear him while she wasn’t held accountable for the complete lack of cooperation.

Long story short: the attorney general’s office can fuck up and go after you for child support arrears (that you already paid) with no due process and it’ll take work, time and money to clear it up. Make sure you NEVER pay in cash and ALWAYS pay exactly how it’s spelled out. Otherwise you definitely will be forced to pay twice.