Question:
I have a court order to pay $960 a month for child support, of which $502 goes to my son’s daycare although my son has not been in daycare for the last three months. Can I go file a motion for modification of my child support or I am stuck paying her the additional $500 a month for something that she refuses to utilize? My court order specifies that the $500 amount is to go to the payment of daycare.
Answer:
If the court order specifically provides for payment of incurred daycare expense to the daycare, and there are no daycare expenses, then it would appear that you need not make those payments. If the order provides for you to pay her the $960 per month and recites that the amount is more than you would otherwise pay based upon the daycare costs being taken into account, you will need to go back to court to have the support amount revised to reflect that those expenses are no longer being incurred by her. However, if your child support would be $960 per month regardless of the daycare and the order was drafted for you to pay the daycare directly in order to assure the daycare is paid, then your child support amount would probably remain the same but the order should be corrected to reflect that the daycare is no longer involved. You would need to review the specific terms of the court orders with an experienced domestic litigation attorney, such as the Cordell & Cordell office in your state.
Richard Coffee is a Litigation Manager in the Belleville Illinois office of Cordell & Cordell. He is an experienced divorce attorney whose practice is devoted to domestic litigation. He is licensed in the State of Illinois and is admitted to practice law in the U.S. District Courts for Northern, Central and Southern Illinois.
Mr. Coffee has extensive domestic litigation trial experience representing clients in courts throughout Illinois on all aspects of domestic litigation, including the representation of clients who are current or retired military personnel with issues under the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act and the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act, clients involved in state court jurisdictional disputes due to the relocation of one or both parties from or to Illinois, and clients with government or private pension benefit valuation and division issues.
