In need of suggestions...

I am married to a wonderful man who has a 5 year old, whom he has been paying child support for, regularly. This last May the mother of the child came to us and wanted to know if we could keep the child through the summer month's so she could get a job and not worry about the child care cost. She knew I was not working at the time and that I had three children of my own to take care of, and she wanted the child to be around people he knew and trusted. She told us that she would just sign the support payments over to my husband for the month's that we would have, this did not happen and we still have the child. In the past few months my husband got depressed over all of the child support and stressed out with his job, and has recently lost his job. As soon as the mother of the child found out, she was upset, and said that she was counting on the money to get his school clothes and supplies. And that she owes so much in back rent, that she needed to pay up or get out. Well, my first thought was...WHERE DID ALL THOSE SUMMER CHILD SUPPORT PAYMENTS GO? What was all that money spent on. The child has been with us since May 15,2000, so from there till the end of July she was recieving her payments. Now, she needs to move and can not afford to take care of the child and wants us to keep him with us from now on. She said she would stop the child support, but what about the months she recieved payments when the child was with us...can we get that money back??? I did call the Child Support Recovery Unit to find out if she in fact is stopping the support payments and they said that she did pick up the paper work and that she will need to mail it back in. I plan to call later today to find out if she has turned them yet or not. So now, we would like to have it legally documented that the child is in our care and get custody. The problem with that is since my husband is not working at this time, we can not afford it. We are scared to death that the mother will change her mind before we can do anything about it. Therefore, we are wondering if there was a way to get help with the custody. Yes, I am now working but can barely pay our bills with what I make. We could sure us some suggestions on where and how we get started. Are there really lawyers out there that do pro-bono work, if so, where do we find them???

Does this mean your husband is still not working ? Surely your best approach would be for him realize that being depressed over paying child support is not a good enough reason to lose his job and make his family suffer. Make him get another job..