Legal Question in Family Law in California

My son turns 19 in 2 weeks. He is currently upset with me bacause I am unable to continue to pay for his truck payment. He called yesterday to say he is not happy about the arrangement his mother and I made privately 5 years ago to reduce my child support. His mother moved out of California state and my son remained with his maternal grandmother. I continued to pay the privately modified support faithfully until he was 18 and graduated. I am paying for his college education now but not child support. He stated to me that he can sue me for back support that he says I owe him because I modified support with his mother and not through the courts. Both his mother and I were non custodial parents since her move and privately modified my support as well as made our own guidelines for her to pay support. We never went to court to have a judge sign anything. Just never thought about it because we were able to come up with a mutual Agreement. Is this true? Can my son now sue me for back support?

Asked on 11/06/12, 1:29 pm

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No, for several reasons. First, he has no standing. Only the ex-spouse to whom support is ordered paid can enforce the order. Child support, although a right of the child, is payable to the adult who has custody to offset the costs of supporting the child while they are a minor. It is not payable to the child. The custodial parent owes the child the direct support of food, clothing, shelter, etc., the non-custodial parent owes a support payment to the custodial parent to offset that. It is not owed to the child. Second, even if he were to convince his mom to assert a claim, a private agreement to modify CAN be enforced in an arrearages determination proceeding, especially if you paid for other things based on relying on the agreement. Third, in an arrearages proceeding you can assert credits for things you paid for that were not in the order. And lastly, it is at least a partial defense to arrerage claims that the custodial parent was not in-fact the person with custody of the child. By the way, since this advice is free and worth at least what you paid for it, if this was my son, I'd cut him off entirely. He clearly needs to learn that the world doesn't owe him a thing and neither do you now that he is a man. I'd make him learn to be one.

Answered on 11/06/12, 2:00 pm

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