In October, my husband got custody of his 6-yr-old son. He had joint custody before this, and paid child support even though he had his son more often than his ex-wife. A year ago, she moved 4 hours away from where we live and left her son with his dad and myself (we had been married a few months at this time). She is allowed to see her son every other weekend in our area and he is not allowed to spend the night with her. The judge also ruled that she provide medical insurance. She is not the type to pay her bills, so we knew that we had to go ahead and (after telling her she needed to get him insurance and her putting us off) provide insurance ourselves. We both teach at a low-income school and she is a part-time worker at Sam's Wholesale. She is unmarried and has no other children. It is pretty expensive for us to have him on our insurance, but we don't have a choice. We've asked her to pay us since the court ruled it her responsibility, but she puts us off and we've given up. It makes me mad that if it were the father not paying, he would be arrested. Is there anything we can do to make her take responsibility and contribute to her son's financial support? It's the least she can do for her son. (Missouri)

In October, my husband got custody of his 6-yr-old son. He had joint custody before this, and paid child support even though he had his son more often than his ex-wife. A year ago, she moved 4 hours away from where we live and left her son with his dad and myself (we had been married a few months at this time). She is allowed to see her son every other weekend in our area and he is not allowed to spend the night with her. The judge also ruled that she provide medical insurance. She is not the type to pay her bills, so we knew that we had to go ahead and (after telling her she needed to get him insurance and her putting us off) provide insurance ourselves. We both teach at a low-income school and she is a part-time worker at Sam's Wholesale. She is unmarried and has no other children. It is pretty expensive for us to have him on our insurance, but we don't have a choice. We've asked her to pay us since the court ruled it her responsibility, but she puts us off and we've given up. It makes me mad that if it were the father not paying, he would be arrested. Is there anything we can do to make her take responsibility and contribute to her son's financial support? It's the least she can do for her son. (Missouri)

Your husband can file to modify the order, the court will add the insurance cost to any CS she's paying now.

Well, I am not sure what to tell you. It may be cheaper for you both to provide insurance versus her, who may be unable to afford it working at Sam's where she may not even get health insurance herself. I think you need to investigate the situation before you do anything because the court could possibly rule on modification that she cannot afford to do this and render a decree for the status quo to continue.