Spousal Support disguised as Child Support

[imwoodstock]

What is the name of your state? Ohio

My husband was divorced in 1999 in Ohio. When the CS calculations were done, based on his income and his ex's, he was to pay 41%, she 59%. They have a shared parenting plan, but the child resides with her.

At the final hearing, she had an attitude and told him if he didn't agree to raise the amount of support from the guideline of $350 to $500 per month and not take his daughter even in the off years as a tax deduction, she wasn't going to go through with the divorce. He was in the military and stationed 4 states away; couldn't afford an attorney; and couldn't afford more leave time to litigate, so he signed off and has been paying $500 a month in support, providing her medical/dental/vision insurance, and never claims her on his taxes. At the time the CS worksheets were completed, his daughter was 8 and the ex claimed child care costs which were based on about $70 a week for 50 weeks a year, even though the child spent every summer out-of-state with her grandmother who didn't charge childcare and received none of the CS from the mother.

About a month ago, we visited the county where the divorce was granted and requested copies of all the paperwork in his divorce file. One thing we were looking for was that in all the paperwork he had, he did not have a copy of her financial disclosure.

In reading through the copies, we found that on the child support worksheet on file, which they both had signed, on the last page where the CS was changed from $350 a month to $500, there is a handwritten notation that this increase was due to spousal support to compensate the wife for her loss of military benefits (presumably her medical benefits as she had a grace period to still qualify for military discounts at the on base store where she still works and has always been able to use the daughter's ID card to make such purchases.). His copy does not have any such writing on it, only the file copy at the courthouse.

Basically, it looks like spousal support disguised as child support. In the actual order, the child support is listed as $350 per month which is crossed out and $500 is written in with nothing alluding to the fact that $150 per month is actually spousal support.

The ex remarried 2 years ago to the man she was seeing a couple of years prior to the divorce. The child is now 13 and hasn't used a babysitter in almost 3 years.

At this point, given this information, does my husband have any grounds to revisit the child support and possibly get it lowered? I'm doubting he could get any of the $150 a month in spousal support back at this point, but perhaps could get the CS adjusted.

 

[stealth2]

He could probably get the childcare portion removed. And as an FYI, many (if not most) child cares will allow up to 2 weeks tuition free for vacation, but you have to pay the other 50 weeks whether the child attends or not so as to keep the slot. That's a righteous thing, and not her scamming Dad.

 

[imwoodstock]

He could probably get the childcare portion removed. And as an FYI, many (if not most) child cares will allow up to 2 weeks tuition free for vacation, but you have to pay the other 50 weeks whether the child attends or not so as to keep the slot. That's a righteous thing, and not her scamming Dad.

Thank you for the advice. I realize how day care's work, however, his daughter was never in a day care center, just the neighbor across the street would watch her. If she wasn't there, the ex didn't get charged. Even before the divorce, she wasn't with the babysitter much because the ex's current hubby would come over and 'watch' her since her mom and he were such good friends.

Every summer while his daughter spent from the week after school let out to the week before school started with grandma in another state, the ex collected $1500. Grandma not only fed, clothed, housed and babysat her, but also bought all her school clothes and school supplies.

This summerly trek to grandmas also meant that she was unavailable for my hubby to visit. Grandma lived the next town away from all of his family. The ex was very controlling and convinced him that he had to take leave for a weekend, drive in from four states away to where she lived, pick up his daughter, driving her up to his home town (another four states away) keeping her at one of his family's homes for the night, then leave her with the ex's grandma. The ex never paid for gas nor had to take vacation to take her or pick her up. His summer visitation was taking his daughter up and picking her up. And, even though granny lived in the next town and did all her shopping blocks from his sisters, brother and parents, she never once took his daughter to visit them.

Unfortunately, in addition to not having a lawyer for his divorce, my hubby never read his divorce papers and didn't know that he'd been granted standard visitation with a clause the the ex had to meet him halfway for the exchange, nor did he even know what standard visitation was till I came along. It did not go over well at all when he started exercising his EOW and summer visitation rights. We're still working on his getting his full allotment of visits three years after we tried to establish them regularly.

Sounds pretty lame, I'm sure, but he came from a small town where people just didn't get divorced. In fact, he's the only one in his entire family or circle of friends from back home who has even been divorced. He was totally clueless.