How to Prove the Amount of Your Past Child Support Payments

My question involves a child custody case from the State of: Florida

My company took out my child support payments directly from my paychecks starting from 2000 to 2018. Sometimes I would be short in the paycheck of $$40 or so (no more than that ) and I would pay my x wife back then, in cash, check or money order.

My child just turned 19 and has graduated from high school. I hired an attorney to end the Child Support order. I come to find out that the ledger showed an open amount of back payments that of course I DID make, but I have no proof of. Who keeps receipts for 19 years? The current ledger on May showed a balance of $3667. I paid this amount in full. Now when I went to close out the case for the payment, the Magistrate is stating that there is a 74 page ledger which is STILL showing some gaps of payments that I would still owe.

If I didn't pay my x the difference back then, why didn't she take me to court? Oh, maybe it's because I DID pay her the difference. I am sure that if she is put under oath, she would have to admit that I did pay her.

How can I defend myself with this after 19 years??? Where are MY rights to this, if any? Thank you

Like anybody else, you have the right to PROVE that you paid.

If you can't PROVE that you paid, you pay again.

It's that simple.

That you didn't keep records about something so monumentally important is on you.

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Quoting Lucky1818

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If I didn't pay my x the difference back then, why didn't she take me to court? Oh, maybe it's because I DID pay her the difference. I am sure that if she is put under oath, she would have to admit that I did pay her.

How can I defend myself with this after 19 years??? Where are MY rights to this, if any? Thank you

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If she does not tell the truth, nothing happens. Lightning does not come out of the sky or anything. Judges are not walking truth detectors.

you defend yourself by having records of what was actually paid (and ex-spouses signature on each and every payment or cancelled checks, etc).
In this case if you have no records, there is not much other to do than to pay what is owed.....

The only thing you can do is prove you paid it. Can you not get any cancelled checks from your bank at all? The IRS said I didn't pay my taxes once from 5 years prior and my bank was able to dig up the old check. It cost me a bit of money, but I got it. Maybe showing you paid anything at all will help you out in the long run.

Understood.

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Quoting Lucky1818

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Understood.

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You also do have the right to ask her to verify to the CSE that you actually paid in full even if the money couldn't come from your paycheck. She might tell the truth, most people would.

However, this is a lesson for other people out there. If the money cannot come from your paycheck then you should NOT pay the ex directly. You should pay it yourself through the CSE so that it gets credited to your account.

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Quoting Lucky1818

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My company took out my child support payments directly from my paychecks starting from 2000 to 2018.

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The child support agency keeps records of the payments it receives. If you were paying your child support and arrears through an order of wage garnishment, there will be a garnishment order that required your employer to make the payments, a record of those payments being made to the child support agency, and a record of the amounts paid to the custodial parent.

There is one issue where no matter what op paid the mother he could still owe the state;

if the state was retaining the payments as payment for some form of welfare the mother recieved. If that is the case, op can try to prove whatever he wants but will still be required to pay the state the balance owed.


If the money is actually owed to the mother op will have to either find proof he paid or ask the mother to admit to the payments or forgive the indebtedness.

Otherwise he will have to fork over the money to the mother (through the state child support system of course)

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Quoting llworking

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You also do have the right to ask her to verify to the CSE that you actually paid in full even if the money couldn't come from your paycheck. She might tell the truth, most people would.

However, this is a lesson for other people out there. If the money cannot come from your paycheck then you should NOT pay the ex directly. You should pay it yourself through the CSE so that it gets credited to your account.

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That's what I kept telling my ex when I was married to him. I was paying his child support to his first ex wife and I told him he needs to get it done through child support. I started to write checks. Eventually they caught up to him and she did fill out some paperwork that said what she had gotten for child support. Then I set it up to pay it online to CSE. (She threatened to withhold visitation if she didn't get money and he was too lazy to take her to court so I started paying so we could see the kids).

When I married my husband he was writing checks to his ex for support. (Fortunately he was smart enough to keep copies.) Because his ex was obsessed with money, I insisted we start using CSE to track payments and protect ourselves. That was about three years after their divorce. Soooo glad we did.

Sure enough, as soon as the paperwork went through, the ex-wife filed a claim for back support, claiming he had made no payments. We had to dig up every single check copy and submit them to CSE. I am very certain she would have filed that same paperwork when the youngest's support ended (12 years later), if we hadn't gotten CSE involved. And that would have been a paperwork nightmare.