Child Support and Welfare

**legalstranger** · 02-27-2012, 12:14 PM

My question involves child support in the State of: CA & AR

My husband's ex recently lost her MediCal coverage because my stepson has private health insurance through his father (my husband). She found this out the hard way though... my stepson had a 4 day hospital stay and now she is being billed for the co-pays and deductible. She has always used MediCal in the past, so the co-pays are coming as a nasty surprise.

I do all the insurance paperwork, so in investigating this for her I found out that she never should have been eligible for MediCal and there's not much she can do at this point. (Oddly, she is court ordered by the Sate of AR to carry MediCal in the divorce paperwork because my husband's coverage is for the state of IL. I always assumed since she is out of our network she qualified for state aid, but I guess that's wrong).

All that to say, while hoping to find something to prove that she is eligible for MediCal, I discovered a CA Child Support Handbook that says very clearly that any CS should be paid directly to her county so that benefits paid by the state can be deducted from CS. Right now our CS is paid through AR, however, so she does not have anything deducted by the state of CA.

I do NOT not want to start a mess. But if she is discovered could this fall back on my husband? I told him to just tell her we discovered the handbook and ask her if she wants to try and have CS moved to her county/state. He hates trying to talk to her about this sort of thing and would rather pretend we don't know anything. I am nervous about the whole thing. What is our legal obligation here?

**Mr. Knowitall** · 02-29-2012, 05:11 AM

You do not give any facts that would suggest that your husband is responsible for any misrepresentation by his ex-, or would be asked to directly reimburse the state for money it could have recovered from his past support payments had they known that his ex- was receiving child support.