Child Support Arrears In California

I am writing this to help out a friend of mine. Basically, he has kids in CA, but reside in FL. He pays current support, but so far nothing is being taken applied to arrears. In the meantime, interest accrues. I suggested that he contact a CA attorney. However, as you all know, it is hard to retain an attorney when you struggle to make ends meet and pay child support. Is there a process to tackle the arrears? I believe he said it was in excess of 50k arrears. He wants to straighten this all out, so I thought I would pose the question here to figure out what he needs to do.

Just call the CA county child support office. Askem what's going on.
I'm sure they will be happy to talk to a guy who's willing to start paying off $50k.
What puzzles me is, how your friend eluded jail time.
$50k will usually get you time in the slammer.

It's easier than you think to elude jail time in CA for failure to pay support. The best way to get yourself hauled into court for criminal contempt of non support is for the CP to call and REQUEST that charges be filed. Other than that, getting THEM to realize (especially in the larger counties) that someone is 50K in arrears is like asking a pyromaniac to start putting out fires instead of starting them.

Arrears won't get you jail time. Not paying child support will. You can get arrears on the day a child support award is issued.

In a very technical sense, arrearages WILL, in fact get you jail time. So you're wrong about that. It is very easy for us to tell what is retroactive support and what is an arrearage.

and in all my years in a courthouse, I've never seen 50K in retroactive support...

never.

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Quoting olanna

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Arrears won't get you jail time. Not paying child support will. You can get arrears on the day a child support award is issued.

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In order to get to the arrears, you have to not pay child support.
50k is alot of non payments.

Just to clarify, the 50k is due him having more than one child with this woman, and interest that has accrued. He was ordered to pay arrears when she took him back to court for more $$$. Over time, it accumulated even though the current support amounts are withdrawn from his check. As you know, there is always a lot of red tape. When you call the state, you get the runaround and never definitive specifics. I was wondering if there was a way to settle or arrange payments so that in a a set amount of time, it would be at zero balance. Just wanted to know of there was way to do it without enlisting a lawyer and paying out more $$$.

Have your friend call CSSD and ask for an audit of the account, just to make sure that the money he says is owed is correct and also ask them to modify his payment amount to include a portion to go toward the arrearages. They will gladly add another $100 to the payment and let that go toward the arrears. However, like I said earlier, 50K doesn't get accumulated in retroactive support alone as you are claiming some of it is and generally, when there is a retro amount, there is a portion of that payment that goes towards paying that down (like the extra money I spoke of above).

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Quoting strongcoffee

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Just to clarify, the 50k is due him having more than one child with this woman, and interest that has accrued. He was ordered to pay arrears when she took him back to court for more $$$. Over time, it accumulated even though the current support amounts are withdrawn from his check. As you know, there is always a lot of red tape. When you call the state, you get the runaround and never definitive specifics. I was wondering if there was a way to settle or arrange payments so that in a a set amount of time, it would be at zero balance. Just wanted to know of there was way to do it without enlisting a lawyer and paying out more $$$.

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The best way is to contact the CSE and set up a payment agreement. Or, if he pays through the state disbursement unit, he is always free to send any extra amount he wishes. Anything paid over the current support amount, should be credited to the arrears.