How Can I Get An Court Order For Child Support If The Parent Lives In Another State?

How Can I Get An Court Order For Child Support If The Parent Lives In Another State?

Contact your state's Child Support Enforcement Agency. The number is quite often in local phone books, or do a Google search- key words child support and your state's name.

Your state can gather all the info and forward the proper papers to the state that the NCP lives in for service.
Xena

It depends on what state the child was CONCEIVED and BORN in. That is the Child Support Office that you should contact. Whatever state the child was conceived and born in has jurisdiction over the proceedings. Most people believe that because the other parent resides out of state that it will affect the case. IT DOES NOT. I speak from personal experience. However, being that I just went through this (I live in California and NCP lives in New Jersey) I will give you the same suggestions that I give my girlfriends and others that ask me about this matter.

- KEEP COPIES OF EVERYTHING (I suggest getting a legal size classification folder and labeling the sections correspondence to, received correspondence or simply just start using the first section and placing all documents in chronilogical order)

- KEEP A JOURNAL - Buy a cute little 6x9 notebook and treat it as you treat your checkbook. Note dates that documents were sent to the DEPT, date, time and person you spoke with when you call to check status of the case.

- CALL THEM EVERY TWO WEEKS NO MATTER WHAT - Call and request to check the status of your case. Document it in your journal. If they are not making progress on your case after say six months, file a complaint and DO NOT BE AFRAID.

- Research and get familiar with state guidelines regarding child support. I printed all bill-zillion pages of the California Family Law Code and when I had to write letters to the Director of Child Support Services, please trust and believe that I quoted specific family law code.

I hope this helps. I am not a lawyer but this comes from my experience of filing for child support in January 1998 and not having an order established against the NCP until April 2005. Yes almost 7 years later. I later learned that had I called them every two weeks, it may not have taken so long. The key is FOLLOW-UP and DOCUMENTATION.

It depends on what state the child was CONCEIVED and BORN in. That is the Child Support Office that you should contact. Whatever state the child was conceived and born in has jurisdiction over the proceedings. Most people believe that because the other parent resides out of state that it will affect the case. IT DOES NOT. I speak from personal experience. However, being that I just went through this (I live in California and NCP lives in New Jersey) I will give you the same suggestions that I give my girlfriends and others that ask me about this matter.

- KEEP COPIES OF EVERYTHING (I suggest getting a legal size classification folder and labeling the sections correspondence to, received correspondence or simply just start using the first section and placing all documents in chronilogical order)

- KEEP A JOURNAL - Buy a cute little 6x9 notebook and treat it as you treat your checkbook. Note dates that documents were sent to the DEPT, date, time and person you spoke with when you call to check status of the case.

- CALL THEM EVERY TWO WEEKS NO MATTER WHAT - Call and request to check the status of your case. Document it in your journal. If they are not making progress on your case after say six months, file a complaint and DO NOT BE AFRAID.

- Research and get familiar with state guidelines regarding child support. I printed all bill-zillion pages of the California Family Law Code and when I had to write letters to the Director of Child Support Services, please trust and believe that I quoted specific family law code.

I hope this helps. I am not a lawyer but this comes from my experience of filing for child support in January 1998 and not having an order established against the NCP until April 2005. Yes almost 7 years later. I later learned that had I called them every two weeks, it may not have taken so long. The key is FOLLOW-UP and DOCUMENTATION.

I realize that you are trying to help, but giving completely incorrect info to a poster can cause the poster alot of problems and delays. So please, for everyone's sake, please do not state something as a legal fact unless you have checked the laws out. I'm not trying to be mean or anything like that, but there is alot of misinformation out there and websites like this one are supposed to assist in helping people with legally correct info.

It does NOT matter which state a baby is concieved or born in as far as filing for CS in concerned. In a situation where the parents live in different states, the Mother MUST go to HER residential state to file for CS. ( In a situation where NEITHER parent lives in the state where the child was concieved or born, that state has NO JURISDICTION over either party, so it would be a big waste of time to file in that state.)

As I stated to the OP, her state's CSE agency will gather all the info and then they will forward it all to the father's residential state for filing and service. You have been misinformed on one other thing- the state the father lives in DOES affect the case, because the laws that apply will be the laws of the father's state, not the mother's state. I participate on other family law boards and quite often women will post asking why thier income matters, when thier state does not use the CP's income in determining CS, then they get upset when they find that because the father's state (which has jurisdiction) uses income shares, they must disclose thier income.

I do agree with your other advice though. Keeping logs and documents is always helpful. Keeping in touch with the CSE agency is also a good idea, but, it shouldn't be overdone. It takes a long time to process everything and if a CP calls too often it can work against them. A friend who works for CSE told me that most agency's understand and don't mind a CP calling once a month, but more often than that is irritating and counterproductive.
Xena :)

You can probably get the state's prosecutor to represent you to get the support due.