Child Support in Oregon

My question involves child support in the State of: Oregon

Me and my husband divorced in 1983, we were separated for a least a year before the divorce. I raised my son for 11 years without any child support from him. In the year 1990 I gave him custody of our son who was 9 years old. He is 28 years old now.

I have been paying child support of 116.00 a month and still am. According to court documents as of 10-21-09 they say that amount previously paid by me was 5, 090.25 and credits of satisfaction 2, 385.55 that I have a balance of 3, 544.20.

How can this be fair when he has never paid child support when I was raising our son, yet I still have a balance of 3, 544.20? He cannot prove he ever paid child support because he never did. Shouldn’t he owe me money? He was ordered to pay 200.00 a month and never did. They did not go after deadbeat dads back then like they do now.

Once the custody was switched the judge ordered that I be offset the amount that he owed me in past child support. Later they only credited me 2, 385.55 . How can this be? Not only that but while my son was with me my second husband and even after I gave him custody we were paying his medical and dental insurance on top of the monthly support.

If he were forced to have paid what he owed it would be around 26,000. What can I do to get this changed? I am on social security and my housing adjustment check and they even deduct from my unemployment and cannot afford this deduction every month, nor can I afford an attorney. What steps should I take?

Even though my ex, the father of our son makes a lot of money now, I don’t even care about him paying me back as much as I just want the support payments stopped, considering my son is 28 years old now. I struggle to get by these days on what I get every month.

Also, in Sept, the courts threaten to put me in jail for contempt and then canceled it saying they were going to cancel the case because non contact from my ex, two days later they said they were reopening it and I was going to jail, so I went for a meeting and while going over the paperwork, my past payments the caseworker acknowledged there mistakes in missing credits and said I would have to reopen the case to get it fixed, but the courts will not reopen the case because it is arrears. So basically I would have to go get a lawyer I cannot afford to reopen the case, when I cannot afford to even feed myself at this time.

Can you help?

Have you tried to contact legal aid in your county? They may be able to help you get the CS office's oversight fixed. Alternately, if you and your ex are on amicable terms, maybe he would be willing to forgive the arrears. You'd still need a lawyer to see if that is feasible, though, so try legal aid.

If you didn't raise these issues in a timely manner, the court will regard them as long closed. Apparently you received a credit for your ex's arrearage almost twenty years ago, and the time to object that it was insufficient would have been way back then. I think it will be very difficult to get those numbers revisited even with the help of a lawyer.

Presumably your support payments are simply payments toward the arrearage you ran up, not an ongoing child support obligation. As was previously suggested, you can see if your ex- will forgive your arrearage, and if he'll cooperate in getting an order entered that your obligations have been fully satisfied.