What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? IL
My divorce is final for one year as of Sept 8th. My husband was awarded full custody and I was granted supervised visits for the year and then after Sept 8th, I no longer have supervised for visits. We had in our original divorce papers that my ex was to pay alimony and I was to pay child support, but as the amounts were almost the same, they just said no child support or alimony for that first year. Now my ex wants his child support and I am willing to pay. I understand that as we have one child, and as I do not have joint custody, I should be paying 20% of my net income. I work as a home health nurse and I get paid per visit to patient home, and that is completely dependent on how many patients my company can provide to me at any given time. In the last few months, I have had fewer patients and made much less money than earlier in the year. In addition, my visitation changed when my son started kindergarten Aug 24th, so I pick him up from school every Tues and Thurs, changing how much time I am available to work, even if my office could provide me with more patients to make more money. I offered already to take each paycheck, copy my stub and give him exactly 20% rounded to nearest dollar on each pay check (I get paid biweekly). My ex wants me to provide him with recent pay check stubs, not to calculate based on what I am making now, but an average of my year to date. If they do that, I am obligated to pay about $311 every 2 weeks, but I am currently making only $700 every 2 weeks, so that is much more than 20%. In addition, my ex states that all IL child support has to go through the state, we can not agree on something ourselves. I told my ex within 2 days of asking for my paycheck stubs that I will be looking into my rights. I have already offered and paid one payment of 20% of my net pay per paycheck. I also am curious why he and his lawyer are trying to contact me instead of going through my lawyer as they always have. I would have thought they would go by last years income tax records, but I readily admit I didn't have a decent job last year most the year, so that amount is probably way low for what I should owe. I was told there is a legal adviser at the court office free to public to answer questions about rights in these type of cases, and I plan to try to talk to her, but it is a first come first serve service during business hours, so I do not have a lot of time to get there and wait, though I am going to try tomorrow. But my ex is pushing for me to get him pay check stubs as soon as possible with year to date earnings.
Should this be going through my lawyer?
Do I have time to find out my rights to get a fair child support order?
He is threatening to go ahead without my income information, can he do that? How do they figure out a number that way?
Is there a way of doing child support the way I offered officially in cases where work is like mine and you can never know what you will be making? I am paid per diem, not hourly. And like I said I only get as many patients as the office can give me, if we are low on patients, I have no way to make up the money. And with my visitation schedule, it is very difficult for me to get a different job, I can never really work full time somewhere else and as an RN, the hours and days are not always flexible.
Obviously after a divorce, I am having a hard time catching up on bill and such and I can't afford to pay more than I am responsible for, but I feel like something is wrong and that my ex and his lawyer are pushing me and leaving my lawyer out on purpose so my ex can get the bigger amount of money. I want to be clear that I want to pay my child support, I just want to pay a fair amount that I can still live off of too.
A second, not as important question: Our divorce papers stated I was responsible for paying 1/2 of the cost of enrolling our son in public school. My ex, having full custody, chose to put our son in a private school, which my ex paid (or is paying) for himself. I offered to pay half, actually assuming until I reread the divorce papers again that I was supposed to. But since he has put in all money, he is claiming I have no rights to know anything about the school. He has it set up with the school that if I contact the school with a question, they contact him and report what I am doing/asking to my ex. My ex told me I have no rights to know anything about school since he is paying. Is this the case? I want to be involved in my child's education, I feel that is important to my child and my job as his mom to know about what is going on, but I am even afraid to email his teacher to ask how he is doing because I don't want to cause issues with my ex. And my ex won't tell me anything, the only way I can find out anything is asking my 5 year old son. Can he keep me from my child's education information? Am I entitled to go to a parent teacher conference or a class play? Now that I will be paying child support, does part of that money go to the schooling so that I am paying for schooling too, or with private school, should that be separate from child support?
Thank you so much for any and all information you can help with.
My divorce is final for one year as of Sept 8th. My husband was awarded full custody and I was granted supervised visits for the year and then after Sept 8th, I no longer have supervised for visits. We had in our original divorce papers that my ex was to pay alimony and I was to pay child support, but as the amounts were almost the same, they just said no child support or alimony for that first year. Now my ex wants his child support and I am willing to pay. I understand that as we have one child, and as I do not have joint custody, I should be paying 20% of my net income. I work as a home health nurse and I get paid per visit to patient home, and that is completely dependent on how many patients my company can provide to me at any given time. In the last few months, I have had fewer patients and made much less money than earlier in the year. In addition, my visitation changed when my son started kindergarten Aug 24th, so I pick him up from school every Tues and Thurs, changing how much time I am available to work, even if my office could provide me with more patients to make more money. I offered already to take each paycheck, copy my stub and give him exactly 20% rounded to nearest dollar on each pay check (I get paid biweekly). My ex wants me to provide him with recent pay check stubs, not to calculate based on what I am making now, but an average of my year to date. If they do that, I am obligated to pay about $311 every 2 weeks, but I am currently making only $700 every 2 weeks, so that is much more than 20%. In addition, my ex states that all IL child support has to go through the state, we can not agree on something ourselves. I told my ex within 2 days of asking for my paycheck stubs that I will be looking into my rights. I have already offered and paid one payment of 20% of my net pay per paycheck. I also am curious why he and his lawyer are trying to contact me instead of going through my lawyer as they always have. I would have thought they would go by last years income tax records, but I readily admit I didn't have a decent job last year most the year, so that amount is probably way low for what I should owe. I was told there is a legal adviser at the court office free to public to answer questions about rights in these type of cases, and I plan to try to talk to her, but it is a first come first serve service during business hours, so I do not have a lot of time to get there and wait, though I am going to try tomorrow. But my ex is pushing for me to get him pay check stubs as soon as possible with year to date earnings.
Should this be going through my lawyer?
Do I have time to find out my rights to get a fair child support order?
He is threatening to go ahead without my income information, can he do that? How do they figure out a number that way?
Is there a way of doing child support the way I offered officially in cases where work is like mine and you can never know what you will be making? I am paid per diem, not hourly. And like I said I only get as many patients as the office can give me, if we are low on patients, I have no way to make up the money. And with my visitation schedule, it is very difficult for me to get a different job, I can never really work full time somewhere else and as an RN, the hours and days are not always flexible.
Obviously after a divorce, I am having a hard time catching up on bill and such and I can't afford to pay more than I am responsible for, but I feel like something is wrong and that my ex and his lawyer are pushing me and leaving my lawyer out on purpose so my ex can get the bigger amount of money. I want to be clear that I want to pay my child support, I just want to pay a fair amount that I can still live off of too.
A second, not as important question: Our divorce papers stated I was responsible for paying 1/2 of the cost of enrolling our son in public school. My ex, having full custody, chose to put our son in a private school, which my ex paid (or is paying) for himself. I offered to pay half, actually assuming until I reread the divorce papers again that I was supposed to. But since he has put in all money, he is claiming I have no rights to know anything about the school. He has it set up with the school that if I contact the school with a question, they contact him and report what I am doing/asking to my ex. My ex told me I have no rights to know anything about school since he is paying. Is this the case? I want to be involved in my child's education, I feel that is important to my child and my job as his mom to know about what is going on, but I am even afraid to email his teacher to ask how he is doing because I don't want to cause issues with my ex. And my ex won't tell me anything, the only way I can find out anything is asking my 5 year old son. Can he keep me from my child's education information? Am I entitled to go to a parent teacher conference or a class play? Now that I will be paying child support, does part of that money go to the schooling so that I am paying for schooling too, or with private school, should that be separate from child support?
Thank you so much for any and all information you can help with.
