Hi I'm in Alabama and I need some help please.
MY ex husband is $42,300 behind in his child support so I went to the county clerks office in June and filed a wage withholding order.
His employer sent my child support to the Alabama Central Disbursment Center where all of the child support is supposed to go.
I started calling in August because I still had not received any child support.
They told me every time that I called that no payments had been received.
Finally I went back to the county clerks office with copies of the checks that the employer graciously made for me to prove that his payments had been made.
The county clerk called DHR to see if they had any knowledge of where my child support was. The woman at DHR told the county clerk that DHR had taken my child support money for the last two months August and September and given it to his other children and that I would not be receiving any child support until the others were caught up.
He's $8,000 behind on that case.
How is that legal that DHR can take my court ordered child support and just give it to someone else? I don't know what to do now because I don't know who else to go to, to get help.

Hi I'm in Alabama and I need some help please.
MY ex husband is $42,300 behind in his child support so I went to the county clerks office in June and filed a wage withholding order.
His employer sent my child support to the Alabama Central Disbursment Center where all of the child support is supposed to go.
I started calling in August because I still had not received any child support.
They told me every time that I called that no payments had been received.
Finally I went back to the county clerks office with copies of the checks that the employer graciously made for me to prove that his payments had been made.
The county clerk called DHR to see if they had any knowledge of where my child support was. The woman at DHR told the county clerk that DHR had taken my child support money for the last two months August and September and given it to his other children and that I would not be receiving any child support until the others were caught up.
He's $8,000 behind on that case.
How is that legal that DHR can take my court ordered child support and just give it to someone else? I don't know what to do now because I don't know who else to go to, to get help.
There could be several possible explainations for this-

Was the other childrens' court order issued before yours? If so, that might have something to do with it. Some states require that any payments made are to be credited to the oldest arrears, or oldest on-going support first, then others if the first is current. You'll need to check your state's laws on that. A good place to find a link to your state's laws is at www.govengine.com

Did either you or the other CP ever recieve public aid? If so, that might explain it, because the state will be reimbursed for thier costs before any CP gets their money.

The best thing right now for you to do, is take all your paperwork to an attorney for a consult to see if there is anything you can do about the situation.

Thank you, I do have an appointment with an attorney Monday.
The other order was first, but he pays it, plus extra for her arrears.
What I don't understand is how they can take all of my sons money. He will be an adult before he receives any child support. Somehow that just doesn't seem fair. Or legal.

Update:
I sent an e-mail to all of the board members at DHR yesterday with all of the information about my case. I got an e-mail response right after I posted this, saying that they would do an investigation.
I just got a phone call from the local DHR office saying that they had received an e-mail from the governors office and that they were fixing the problem right away. I'm still out the two months child support that they sent to the other case, but from now on I should get my full amount. Now all I can do is wait and see how it goes.
Thank you Xena for your response, I researched the laws here regarding the crediting to the oldest arrears and that is true with any extra money that they receive but they have to give each custodial parent their child support first before they can give out any to arrearages.