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Blended Families
jeno111
member
Sticky situation and CS modification
jeno111
member
I havent posted on here for a long time as we don't really have a blended family situation n but I figured you ladies may have some advice.
Some backstory.. My DH adopted his ExW's daughter when they were married. Stepdaughter was 6 at the time. ExW repayed my DH's fantastic gesture by starting an affair (with her now husband) 2 days after they returned from their honeymoon (obviously he didn't realize this). She left my DH after 2 years and moved in with this man. My husband traveled for 8 days at a time and was home for 4 days so the affair was very easy to hide. It's now been 4 years since their divorce. Since my DH adopted her daugther, he is responsible for paying child support (a 4 figure number each month) for this child. We don't live in the same city or state as them so I really don't have any sort of bond with her and my DH does not either. The little girl he adopted is now 13, not 6. He has no say in schooling, religion, etc (all in the CS papers) and is entitled to EOW visits and 2 months of visitation in the summer. We have obviously not been doing the EOW visits since we live across country and the daughter is involved in softball and summer sports and makes the choice to stay with her mom during the summer to participate in those. Truthfully, I can not blame her, why would she want to spend time with a man she lived with for 2 years, 4 years ago and his new wife that she does not know. She will be spending a week with us next month before she returns to school.
We received a notice from the state today that we are now able to modify the CS amount. We are comtemplating requesting CS modification but do not know what is all taken into consideration when determining the amount. Does anyone have any knowledge on what types of expenses are taken into consideration when figuring out the CS amount? ExW's new husband is now the father figure in her life but he is not willing to adopt her. They would lose the income that they receive from us.
TIA!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Sticky situation and CS modification
Wha is your reasoning for requesting the change? Unless he is making less or in some states the BM is making more then he is it going to get it lowered, and as her legal father they should not lower it even though it sucks big time for you guys since no one in this situation but the courts consider him her father. The judge is not going to lower it for the reasons listed above.
This is a huge reason that I really dislike step-parent adoption in most situations, the biological parent is off the hook and no one took the kid into consideration, I am not saying your DH did not have good intentions bun if you are not going to be a real parent to the child if you get divorced then do not become the legal parent just because you are getting married. And this is not a flame to DH since it is too late for that since I am sure he realizes now but I hope someone reads this and thinks twice about having their new DH adopt their kid (and of course there are exceptions but 99% of the people that mention it on here make me cringe bc I "know" that if their new spouse cheated on them tomorrow they would not want them to have visitation with their child but since they are oh so in love they think I am nuts.
You can google your state's child support calculator and determine what your husband should be paying based on his income and also what factors they take into consideration. In my state, only the NCP's income is considered and for one child it's 20% of the net income. Also, your husband has children with you, that is also considered in and can lower the percentage slightly. The risk of a child support review is that he could end up paying more if his income is higher now than it was when the support was originally calculated.
Doesn't sound like she's the type of woman that would let go of the child support regardless of his involvement. The bright side is, only 5 more years left for ya. Good luck!
Wha is your reasoning for requesting the change? Unless he is making less or in some states the BM is making more then he is it going to get it lowered, and as her legal father they should not lower it even though it sucks big time for you guys since no one in this situation but the courts consider him her father. The judge is not going to lower it for the reasons listed above.
This is a huge reason that I really dislike step-parent adoption in most situations, the biological parent is off the hook and no one took the kid into consideration, I am not saying your DH did not have good intentions bun if you are not going to be a real parent to the child if you get divorced then do not become the legal parent just because you are getting married. And this is not a flame to DH since it is too late for that since I am sure he realizes now but I hope someone reads this and thinks twice about having their new DH adopt their kid (and of course there are exceptions but 99% of the people that mention it on here make me cringe bc I "know" that if their new spouse cheated on them tomorrow they would not want them to have visitation with their child but since they are oh so in love they think I am nuts.
.
I could not agree with you more. I cringe everytime I hear people say "he/she loves my child and wants to adopt" All fine and dandy until a divorce happens. But like you said, it's done. He had every intention of being her dad and staying involved in her life but ExW has made that pretty damn impossible. Telling him (verbally of course) that "I'm her bio-mom, your just an adoptive parent" and things along those lines.
I know that we can't get a CS modification just on that alone but as there are no longer daycare expenses, they now live with her parents and have 0 living expenses (doubt that could be proved, her parents would say they are paying rent) I wasn't sure if that "counted". She makes decent money but it's in a small town company and part of her earnings are paid under the table to purposely avoid reporting the income to the courts in the first place. We have no idea what she actually makes. We live in a HCOL area and DH makes the same amount as he did before. Again, it was our choice to move so I am not sure how that would calculate into the equation.
Honestly, part of me is just looking to vent as I cringe everytime we right our the CS check each month. I know we probably don't have a leg to stand on. We are putting off starting our own family until CS ends and it is starting to wear on me.
I agree with littlejen.
firstly, try to do a child support calculator in the state where the CO is written. you can also look for an attorney to do a free consult for you to see if you have a leg to stand on (again, keeping in mind this needs to be in the state the CO is written/signed in)
you could also have DH threaten to file contempt for all the missed visitation (even though you guys moved, not sure how that would go over) unless she agrees to lower the CS. she might take the bait, but if she consults an attorney he will see right through that game.
best of luck!
My heart really goes out to your dh. It sounds like he was trying to do the right thing, but look at karma. Bm is having to live at home and sounds like a sad person while your dh is happy, married and moved on.
The only advice I can give is never get an attorney involved. An attorney is for when you are willing to spend $30k to get more time. If you can file the CS stuff on your own- do it. Otherwise just write it off. We took Bm to court and we no longer pay CS but now we have $40k in legal fees. I would have 100x over preferred that money go in some small way to SS than our idiot attorneys. 100x over. We only did it because we wanted more time, Bm dropping CS was just a bargaining tool she used to finally settle- we were cashed out on legal fees so we were going to settle regardless though