Legal Question in Family Law in Arkansas

Re: question about custody law

My state law might be different from yours on both the custody and the support, so check with an attorney.

Parents can agree to modify parenting arrangements in writing or orally. To be enforceable, it must be written, filed with the court, and adopted as an order. That's the quickest way to have an enforceable plan. Since dad refuses to write it down, you will have a "de facto" arrangement -- no writing but in fact you and he agreed to modify.

I assume child support is withheld from your income, so you can't simply stop paying. Without a court-sanctioned modification, you technically owe support to the official custodial parent. To stop paying child support, you will have to defend that de facto arrangement in court, get an order recognizing that you're the custodial parent, and then address the child support issue. That could be in the same motion or it could come later.

Probably the best way to take care of both issues is to file a motion as soon as dad delivers child, say father brought child to you and in essence said "keep her," child wants the modification, you want it, so please order the change to be permanent. At the same time, ask the court to adopt your proposed child support order (in my jurisdiction, we attach proposed orders). Best bet in my jurisdiction is to calculate support and say something like: "based on the attached child support financial affidavits we exchanged last time and on this new calculation I made, please also make dad pay child support of $X per month." [You will probably have to go with old financial affidavits because dad won't cooperate by filling out a new one. It is likely both your incomes have increased, so you could impute a raise to him based on the percentage yours has gone up.]

It will be to dad's financial advantage to slow proceedings so he can continue collecting support. When you move the court to change custody and support, you could try ask for an emergency order to hold your support payments in abeyance or have your employer put it in an escrow-type account. The alternative account shows good faith that, if the court doesn't allow child to remain with you, you have the child support arrearage safely tucked away. The less desirable alternative is to ask the court to make dad reimburse you for support you paid him from the time child came to your house until the court changed the support order. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one; my understanding is that overpayments aren't credited to the payor and it's hard to get reimbursements from unwilling parties even if it is allowed.

Something else to think about -- who will provide the insurance coverage for the child? Anticipate that dad will remove child from the coverage as soon as she moves into your house. Your cost of providing insurance can impact child support, so don't overlook it.