I live in MO and my X lives in OK. We have one child together who is now 14 years old. Full custody was granted to me 11 years ago when we were divorced. My X has visitation rights that he does not exercise (his choice). He has only seen my 14 yo 3 times in the past 11 years. He got remarried when our son was 4 and just kind of forgot about him. His new wife has 2 children from previous relationships and they have 1 child together. I got remarried when our sone was 7 and now have 2 children with my current husband.

He paid child support some what regular until about 4 years ago when he stopped paying anything at all. I also stopped getting his tax intercepts then. He is now $17,000 in arrears.

After much tracking and working with OK CSE, I was able to find out that he now owns his own business. OK filed contempt charges on him and he got mad so he filed for a modification. For some reason he seemed to think he could tell them that his business made an unusually low amount and they would believe him without him proving it. They basically told him that he had to prove it and needs his tax records. Since he didn't file taxes for 2004 and couldn't prove his lie, he withdrew the modification request. OK CSE basically dropped the contempt charges and now he has to go in for a review every 6 months. He was ordered to pay the amount that was set for child support in our divorce 11 years ago plus $100 on the arrears every month.

This was decided about 5 months ago. He goes in for his 1st review at the end of Jan. He has made 3 payments (he makes one about every other month).

Okay. Now that you know the history, here is my mystery.....

The company that he got a loan with for his business is foreclosing on his house!! :eek: OK CSE (his arrears) is listed as a defendant along with his mortgage company. WHY? What does this mean? Is this a good thing for me? How did the loan company know he was so behind on his child support?

My other questions are: What are the chances of the child support getting lowered if I file for a modification? Remember it has been the same amount for the past 11 years. What if he just lies about his income again and this time the believe him?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and trying to help me. :)

They are listed as a defendant because he owes that as a debt, and CSE "can" place liens against personal property (like houses) too. They may have done this. As for how the loan/mortgage company would know he was behind... CS arrears can be listed on credit reports. If they pulled his credit report I'd bet you dollars to donuts that it's listed on there as a delinquent account with the credit reporting agency.

Only if he can prove that he's making less now than he was 11 years ago would I worry about them lowering support.

So which debt will be paid first when they sell his house? I guess what I am asking is what 'generally' the court considers the most important.
Thank you so much!!
:)

I can't give you a definitive answer to that one, but my guess would be the mortgage company would since it's them who owns the title to the property. It's technically still their property until the loan is paid off in full by the buyer, so my thinking is that they would get first shot at the pie for the balance owed on the house. However, don't quote me on that.

my guess would be the mortgage company

Right. The lender gets paid first, then if anything is left over you might see some money. I worked in mortgage servicing for 15 years, and in a foreclosure it's rare for there to be excess funds, but it is a possibility.