Legal Question in Family Law in Illinois
My fiance and I have been together for 5 years now. We have a daughter together who is almost 4 years old. My fiance has 3 children from the past. 2 of the children live out of the state with their mom and my fiance has no contact with them. We recently had court to modify child support. One of the 2 children that live out of state is 18, so he was emancipated. Stupidly, we thought going into court that my fiance's child support would go down. Instead went up $200/mo. He now pays $1000/mo in child support for the remaining two children. He makes about 2850 prior to any taxes, insurance, or retirement. After the increase, it will leave him with bringing home about 320 every two weeks.
I am not sure how a man is supposed to live, let alone support a family with this sort of pay. I feel as though we are being taken advantage of. I dont have a problem with paying support at all, but to me this is far beyond excessive.
I dont know if this is really excessive, or if this is a normal amount for a father to pay. Is there something we can do? Of course we are really tight with our budget and it would be hard for us to hire a lawyer, but if I knew it would save us money in the end, it would be worth it to explore the option. Should I, or can I ask for child support for our daughter? We cannot apply for any sort of assistance, not that I would want to, but we are seriously barely able to make it paycheck to paycheck.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Without knowing more, it is difficult to answer. you do not indicate was his gross income is. you also do not indicate in what state the support order was entered. then you do not indicate if he was in arrears when modification was sought. You became involved with a man that had, for lack of a better term, three prior mortgages. If the orders were entered in IL, then he would be paying 28% of his net income as determined by law (voluntary retirement payments do not count as a deduction, for example) then is there is an arrearage) 20% of amount can be added to his monthly payment. Then the amount of current support is deducted from his net income and 20% of that amount goers to the next child. And is there is an arrearage, it gets kicked up 20%. However federal law limits the amount that they can take out for child support to 55% of his income. It is not proper to take out more. If they are his employer is violating federal law. But what is not being paid, earns interest at 9% per annum.
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