Dad Filed to Modify;intention: NO Child Support

My ex is always hitting me up to do a 50/50 agreement but I refuse. I mentioned it to my divorce attorney and he said the minute you start doing 50/50 he can modify and stop paying child support. The support has no bearing on my decision not to do it, but I have been told that 50/50 agreements eliminate the need for support.

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Sorry to say this but in today’s world we can say it. He is selfish. No court will do that, they may cut his support but they are not going to take the support completely away. They will want to look at your income and his and decide weather or not to even do anything to it. He does have a right to ask for a change. But as long as the children are under 18, someone will be paying support for the kids even if it is shared custody. Laws have changed some what but this I do know they will not take full child support away from the children. If he goes to court and they see how much he has and see he can afford it they will laugh him out of the court room. Check out the two links I posted to see if they can give you some light on the subject. If you can't afford a lawyer and you don’t make a lot of money you can probably go to the North Texas Legal Aide for help obtaining a lawyer it is based on your income.

http://www.raggiolaw.com/txart02.html#2

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/cs/

Good Luck,

T.

1 mom found this helpful

Not going to comment on the first part, only b/c I have no idea how TX will deal with that situation. However, I can tell you that in TX, NEITHER parent is REQUIRED to help out with college expenses. It's a choice, not a requirement. I know lots of married couples who don't help their child with college expenses. It's not an automatic right.

My husband isn't required to put aside money for his daugther's college nor is he required to help her when the time comes. He fully intends to help her, but knew better than to have it written into his divorce decree. She's a great student and he has no problem helping, but at the same time, what if she ends up being a huge party animal and he's forced to fund that behavior based on his divorce decree... not smart at all...

All of that being said, if your sons are good students and the only reason he won't help out is to spite you... well... karma will come back and bite him in the end. But the TX family court system won't. ;)

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I would think if you are sharing cutsody you are surely sharing expenses, but I know that is sometimes not the case. I can't imagine a judge not making him pay for the insurance for the children as well as half of all medical bills. As for the other daily expenses of utilities and things such as clothing and lunch money, those should or I would assume, are shared because of the weekly arrangement.
I don't know from personal experience, but I did have a boyfriend several years back (7 years just to give you a time frame) that had what sounds like your arrangement and neither of them paid support because they shared equal amounts of time with the child throughout the year, but he was required to carry the child on his medical insurance and they did split all medical costs. Child support is designed to cover the daily costs of the child, but if equal amounts of time are spent at each household I would think that would cancel either party from owing the other.

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