4,000 original amt. -paid 40,000 so far!

My ex-husband (my best friend) has been paying the county support agency for a reimbursment for AFDC I got for a few years, (20 years ago). The original was around $4,000. He was unemployed at the time but they based the amount on his old salary from his last job, saying that, that was his earning potential. When he started working (a lower paying job) they garnished his wages. Eventually, the right to add interest was passed and added on. He has paid almost $40,000 now and the balance is still another $20,000 and growing. Our daughters are in their 30's now. He is unemployed again and they take $360.00 from his unemployment checs each month. How do we stop this? This is insane! Where do we go, who do we talk to? I've tried talking to the county support agency and they say they can't do anything. There has to be some way to stop this.

He should stop making installment payments, incurring late fees and other charges, and pay off the entire balance.

He doesn't make payments, they are garnishments, and the balance is still over $30,000. I think you're missing the point here. We need to find a way to have this stopped. There are NO late payment fees, it's just interest on interest and even a settlement amount is unfair. This is not child support, it is robbery.

Contact your state legislator.

If he's not making large enough payments to get the balance paid off, that's his fault not the state's. He knows what his balance is. He knows who the payments are made to. At any time along the way, including right now, he could have chosen to pay more. For that matter, he could have chosen to pay his child support in the first place so he wouldn't have an arrearage.

There's no magic that's going to make this go away.