Medical Bills Responsibilities

Rough-Area4765 · 2022-02-12T01:47:47+00:00

Does your decree or temp order define what to pay for unreimbursed medical? Mine says 50/50. If yours doesn’t, lookup your state laws for a standard. Safe to assume 50/50 for unreimbursed medical expenses.

DntCareBears · 2022-02-12T05:58:58+00:00

This is the best advice you’re going to get. No I am not a lawyer.

Find out the total cost of the bill. Assuming its a deductible. Lets just say its $800.00. Well its going to cost more money in attorney fees to litigate this issue.

A respectable attorney would not even take this on solely on that fact alone. However, if she filed a motion in the courts on her own then you would have to follow response to that motion. At that point the only thing that would be at stake is your time. Your best bet here is to write her a letter offer to pay and have that letter as evidence in the event that you end up in front of the judge.

chicken_po_boy · 2022-02-13T06:58:57+00:00

It sounds like your ex is bent out of shape because she's paying the health care premiums for the kids and is also expected to pay half of the deductible expenses. She may have a point, it depends on what your temp order says.

It may specify who should pay the healthcare premiums for the kids, and whether or not this is taken into account in the child support. If it doesn't specify, then it's reasonable to expect each parent to pay half. (You can figure the cost of the kids' healthcare premiums as the difference between her family plan and the single plan that she would pay for herself alone).

50/50 for unreimbursed medical expenses is reasonable, provided one parent isn't getting stuck paying the other parent's share of the premiums as well.

My divorce decree says my ex and I will share the healthcare premiums 50/50, and deductible expenses 50/50. Since I have the kids on my healthcare, I am paying her 50% of the premiums through my payroll deduction. As a result, the child support is lowered by an equivalent amount. If we ever switched the kids to her employer's healthcare, she would be paying my 50% of the premiums through her payroll deduction. So I would need to pay more in child support to compensate her for that.

pegleg_legal · 2022-02-14T06:41:38+00:00

Typical clauses are:

The party who has the best insurance available through their employer will insure the kid.
Any uncovered (and necessary!) medical expenses are 50/50 (or some other proportion).

If there is no agreement, it is a joint expense. The "well, I'm the one insuring them" excuse is bunk - depending what they deduct from her check for having the kid as the additional insured.

Eve-3 · 2022-02-15T04:30:25+00:00

Your decree may well state that you have to provide insurance and in the event that you don't any and all medical costs are 100% yours even though she has them covered. She's not the one legally responsible, you are. That she has additional coverage doesn't negate your responsibility to provide coverage.

Or it could just state one of you have to cover them but it doesn't matter who, in which case you only have to pay half.

In short, read your paperwork. That's where all the info is and we're playing a game of "what-if" here.

Title	Medical Bills Responsibilities
Author	Junior-Database
Upvotes	5
Comments	19
Date	February 12, 2022 1:25 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/sqfac4/medical_bills_responsibilities/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/medical-bills-responsibilities.1101150 https://theredarchive.com/post/1101150

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