Legal Question in Family Law in Colorado
Reducing Child Support
in my divorce decree I was ordered to pay 1000.00 a month for both my daughters. This was filed in Illinios. I was stationed in California at the time. I now have a new wife and 2 new sons. I was recently was demoted to E-1 and only bring home 1150.80 a month before taxes. My new family gets nothing at all. I called Illinios and the clerk told me I have to show up and file to have the case sent to california then I have to go in front of a judge there for it to be approved. There is noway I can do this. My daughters bank accounts are drained. They have no money at all adn my ex is asking for more to buy clothes. when I asked her what she was spending the 1000.00 on she replied, rent, electricity, and burger king. Am I allowed to ask for receipts? 14000.00 dollars is a whole lot to spend at burger king in a year. Since the money isn't supposed to go toward rent and utilities. She is married to a guy in the Navy overseas and is on disability. She brings home over 5000.00 and still begging for more, while my new wife and two kids get 0.00. My sons are going to starve. Can you tell me how I can go about this, since I live quite aways from Illinios. Thank you.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Reply: Reducing Child Support
You need to find a lawyer in Illinois that you can work with to file for a modification of support. Since the underlying order was made in Illinois, that is the place to have it modified.
Good luck to you.
Brian Levy, Esq.
www.calattorney.com
Re: Reducing Child Support
The initial question in my mind is whether the Illinois court had personal jurisdiction over you to issue a child support judgment against you. Your reference to "at that time" is clear that you were in California when the decreee was issued, but is not clear whether you were in Illinois when the divorce action was filed, and that is the time jurisdiction is determined. If it did not have personal jurisdiction over you at that time, then the order would not be valid unless you appeared in the action and consented to the jurisdiction. Not being an Illinois lawyer, I cannot say whether any special rules apply there giving the court jurisdiction if Illinois was your military "home of record" at the time. For the purposes of the rest of my response, I will assume that jurisdiction over you existed.
You really need to contact an Illinois lawyer because it can probably only be changed there unless your ex- consents to jurisdiction in Calif. I am assuming that your ex- and your kids by her all live in Illinois, so the California courts likely would have no basis to exercise personal jurisdiction over either her or the kids. So, you are going to have to find a way to get a lawyer in Illinois and file a petition for modification. You would probably only have to travel to Illinois for any contested hearing. But, the validity of the existing order is not in any way automatically invalidated just because of a sharp drop in income.
Perhaps another California or Illinois lawyer who does a lot more family law work than I do will know if any special rules are applicable to military personnel in this situation.
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