She left the state, remarried, and refuses to pay child support

[Jim77357]

In 1997, my exwife walked out on me and our 4 kids for a life of drugs and booze. I went to the courts in Houston Texas and was awarded full custody of my kids and she was ordered to pay child support. She has since left Texas, still married to me, and married the man she left me for, changed her name and refuses to pay her child support. She only makes contact with us when SHE feels bad about leaving, which is roughly once every few months. Now it is 7 years later and suddenly she wants to have the kids for the summer. She lives with her mother in Alabama and I have Custody papers and court ordered support from Texas. What are the laws pertaining to child support evaders leaving the state and then attempting to get tempory custody?

[nogoodwoman]

Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, Vernon’s Texas Family Code Ann. § 159.001 et seq. Provides for reciprocal enforcement of support orders between states and other proceedings to establish, enforce, or modify support orders.

[elklaw]

From what you are saying, your wife or ex-wife is not entitled to temporary custody if you have full physical custody. You may want to tell her that she will need to go to court in Texas and get a court order that allows her to have visitation with the children and allows the children to spend a period of time in the summer with her and her mother out of state. Given her track record, I doubt she could get that kind of order though the court may allow her to come to Texas to visit the children in hopes of re-establishing a parental bond if her life of inappropriate behavior is over and she has genuinely started to turn her life around. In the absence of the court ordering you to send the kids out of state to vacation with their mother as part of the custody order, you have no obligation to comply with her wishes.