Please read and help!!

[Berritt]

washington: i have a 5 year old daughter with a man i never married. i was with him for 5 years, he has been gone for about 2. my daughter lives with me. he still sees our daughter regularly, every other weekend thurs to sun, but has only made about 1/20th of his child support payments, which had to be garnished. we have an order through office of support enforcement. i have paid for all of the childcare expenses myself with no help. i provide medical coverage through my job. recently we has to take our daughter out of preschool because of an alligation of molestation. her dad and his wife have been watching her in the daytime for about the past month while i work and bring her home after work. today i recieved a notice that he had applied for child support from me. there is already an order for him to pay child support. neither of us has legal custody, but she does live with me. his wife did not know that he had applied for support and thinks he is wrong in doing so. does he have grounds to collect child support from me even though he owes a few thousand dollars in back support and i have paid for all childcare and medical care for her? also, i am worried that he may try and get custody just so he can be paid child support. i live in a 2 bedroom apartment while her father, step mom and baby brother share a 1 bedroom apartment. i do have an appt with an attourney at the end of this month, but this is causing me a great deal of stress.

 

[cott2]

GET CUSTODY FAST!!!

Hi,I live in Va. and my first thing that I would suggest is for you to go to court and get legal full custody or you can get joint custody,this is were both parents have custody but the one that the child resides with has physical custody(just means that child lives full time with you).In Va. if you are ordered to pay support it doesn't matter if you have the child part of the time,most of the time or whatever,you still have to pay.But there is one stipulation,if a father/mother has a child a certain number of days out of the year the child support can be reduced but not unless it is court ordered.Why don't either of you have legal custody?When my daughter's dad and I split up that was the first thing I did(and I don't want to scare you)but in some states if neither parent has custody then one of you can take the child out of state or where ever you want and there's nothing the other parent can do if the parent that took the child refuses to bring the child back.Just because you are the mother and the child has been living with you doesn't mean anything,you have to have LEGAL CUSTODY.Please don't trust anyone when it comes to your child,I didn't trust my girl's dad because he told me he would take her and I would never see her again and that's why I wouldn't let him take her anywhere until it went to court and I got full custody.Now if he tries anything like that he can be arrested.Not saying all dad's would do that,I know her's would,but I personnally wouldn't take a chance.Talk to the lawyer and find out about the support and custody.In my opinion,it sounds like your child's dad took on the babysitting responsibility not to help you out but to get out of paying his child support.I'm not a lawyer so go talk to one,but I am a mom & step-mom and been going through alot of "BS" over my kids and with the exs.Good luck.I'll check in on your post again or you can reply back to me.