Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Help for fathers

What do you do when you are behind in CS and everytime you go to court the judge ask the mother what would she like to see done and the mothers answer is ''Lock him up''? It isn't like he is years behind. He maybe a few months behind and is trying to pay it. Help me understand what putting him in jail is going to solve. He is self employed and business has been slow. If he goes to jail, he will be even further behind and then it starts to affect his employees also because he will not be able to pay them. Then when he calls attornies they want to charge him $250.00 an hour.


Asked on 4/17/07, 6:23 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Thomas Brown Law Office of Thomas K. Brown, LLC

Re: Help for fathers

I would agree with you that jailing the father would solve nothing, and only make matters worse, as long as the father is currently making at least some significant portion of the support payments. Jail may be appropriate in some cases, for example, where the father is willfully failing to make payments when he could, and has accumulated a substantial arrearage. If the father's ability to pay child support has significantly changed, he may be able to seek a modification of the support order, at least as far as future payments go.

Either way, you should contact a family law attorney. Depending on your locale, I'm sure if you shop around you can do better than $250/hour. As an alternative, check with your county bar association and see if they operate a pro se service assisting people in representing themselves in these matters.

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Answered on 4/17/07, 9:22 pm


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