Direct Payment vs. Garnishment

My question involves child support in the State of: Illinois
My ex wife and I agreed to a certain amount of child support in our divorce a few years back for our 2 daughters. She has sole custody. We agreed I would pay her directly each week. On July 9, 2013, she went to the courthouse and filed to have it modified and taken directly out of my paycheck. But she is still demanding I pay her physically as well. I went in to the court and gave them all the info they would need to start the process. They advised me to stop any physical payments to her, that the court would backdate from the date she filed. She has actually been making threats, saying if I dont give her a check, she will prevent me from seeing my children. Should I be giving her checks??

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Quoting NWTomlinson

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My question involves child support in the State of: Illinois
My ex wife and I agreed to a certain amount of child support in our divorce a few years back for our 2 daughters. She has sole custody. We agreed I would pay her directly each week. On July 9, 2013, she went to the courthouse and filed to have it modified and taken directly out of my paycheck. But she is still demanding I pay her physically as well. I went in to the court and gave them all the info they would need to start the process. They advised me to stop any physical payments to her, that the court would backdate from the date she filed. She has actually been making threats, saying if I dont give her a check, she will prevent me from seeing my children. Should I be giving her checks??

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Child support is not a ticket to visitation. If she denies your visitation, file for contempt.

No, you shouldn't. SHE asked for the court to monitor payments, and that's what she got. And that's ALL she gets.

Make sure to save any messages/texts/emails that indicate a threat to interfere with your visitation. If she actually DOES deny you any court ordered visitation, get back before the court immediately. The judge will be happy to give her some smack down.

Thanks! I knew I was doing the right thing but couldnt find any justification.

Just make sure that you save the money plus a bit more. By the time your case is heard you'll have a ton of arrearages stacked up and if you have the money, you can pay it down directly to child support enforcement.

Also, make sure you have a complete payment history when you go in for the hearing. Gather all of your cancelled checks together.

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Quoting NWTomlinson

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My question involves child support in the State of: Illinois
My ex wife and I agreed to a certain amount of child support in our divorce a few years back for our 2 daughters. She has sole custody. We agreed I would pay her directly each week. On July 9, 2013, she went to the courthouse and filed to have it modified and taken directly out of my paycheck. But she is still demanding I pay her physically as well. I went in to the court and gave them all the info they would need to start the process. They advised me to stop any physical payments to her, that the court would backdate from the date she filed. She has actually been making threats, saying if I dont give her a check, she will prevent me from seeing my children. Should I be giving her checks??

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I am actually kind of surprised that they are giving you that advice. I have never seen that. What I have seen is that you should keep making your child support payments until such time as it starts coming out of your check. However, you should be making the payments via the child support agency, not directly to your ex. That way you get proper credit for the payments.

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Quoting llworking

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I am actually kind of surprised that they are giving you that advice. I have never seen that. What I have seen is that you should keep making your child support payments until such time as it starts coming out of your check. However, you should be making the payments via the child support agency, not directly to your ex. That way you get proper credit for the payments.

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It could be that he was told that because support enforcement agencies receive incentive payments based on their collection success rate. That would be my guess.

In our divorce, we waived direct payment options. So I have been giving her checks every week directly. When she filed, that became null and void. I was told they would backdate the support payments to the date she filed, whether I pay her directly or not. It would take the same amount of time fpr me to set up payemnts through a support enforcement agency, than for my employer to set it up through the courts. Thats why I was told to stop any physical payments directly to her. I was just curious if anyone else had gone through this.