Legal Question in Family Law in California

You need to consult with a family law attorney, but you also want to get some rather specific facts to have in hand when you meet with the attorney. First, are the children actually receiving federal disability benefits? If they are the benefits should be SSI but could be from some other program. It would be important to find out how much money the children are receiving. The other concern your question raises is whether the father and custodial parent has reported the child support income to SSA. He also needs to provide SSA with an annual report on who he has spent the income he has received on the children's behalf. Also there are resource limits that impact the ability to "hoard" funds.

I suggest that you consider a mediation session to get information about the benefits the children are receiving. You may also want to reconsider the visitation arrangements so that you have some grounds for requesting an adjustment in support payments on your part, especially if you are going to have the children spending more time in your home.

You may find out that in order to get the maximum in disability benefit payments, as the custodial parent, it may have made more financial sense for him not to have earnings income that would count against the childrens' disability benefit payments. This means that in addition to consulting with a family law attorney, you should also meet with a Social Security disability benefits attorney who is familiar with the rather complicated childrens' benefits payment system.

Good luck with this.