Child Support

Often when someone believes that the other party in a court proceeding is withholding information about finances or is purposefully concealing information, s/he may be able to ask the judge to sign a subpoena to get any information that can help to uncover what is going on. And, generally, the petitioner on a subpoena request can generally add other names or aliases under which that person is known to the subpoena. So, for example, a party may be able to ask the judge to sign a subpoena in which the other party’s employer needs to produce all paychecks issued to the person, or his/her bank may need to produce records of any accounts issued to the person, or the IRS may be subpoenaed to produce all tax documents, etc. And, generally, in the subpoena, the person’s name for which the records are requested can be listed with any names or aliases. So, for example, if a woman changed her name from Michelle Smith to Michelle Jones, the records could be requested for Michelle Smith, AKA Michelle S. Jones, AKA Michelle Smith Jones, AKA Michelle Jones.

Have you been in touch with an attorney to try to figure out what you may be able to do in your situation? As I mentioned, I cannot analyze situations or give out legal advice and I do not know how the subpoena process usually works in STATE. Here is a link for lawyers, including free legal assistance where I hope you can get some legal help since trying to issue subpoenas or challenge a child support order on one’s own can be very complicated: LINK If you can’t find legal representation for free, perhaps you may be able to use the local Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service to get a low-cost initial consultation from a private lawyer to orient you as to what your options may be: LINK

Also, one more thing that I want to mention is that in some child support situations, if a person feels that the noncustodial parent is under-reporting income, a judge may be able to “impute” income - basically, the judge can see what the expenses of the person are and then can assume that the person is making at least enough money to pay those expenses even if the person only shows less money on his/her income tax returns. So, if a person is buying cars and houses or going on expensive vacations, but only has limited income coming into the bank account under his/her “legal name” or on his/her taxes, the petitioner’s lawyer may be able to make the argument that the judge should impute that there is additional income somewhere based on the parent’s spending.