Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

You raise three issues:

1. Jurisdiction. You said you live in TX. Does the other party live in TX and is this case being heard in TX? If no, don't read the rest of my response! If yes, please read on.

2. Reasonable and necessary health care expenses not paid for by health insurance. Your order should state that these are paid half by you and half by the other parent. The division of these expenses is not always 50:50 and sometimes cash medical support is ordered on a monthly basis, which acts kind of like a homemade deductible. But the general rule is that they are split 50:50 **AND** the order needs to contain language to that effect.

3. How is child support calculated. By default, the court will compute your "net monthly resources" and apply a percentage to that. Net monthly resources includes all income from all sources (except welfare), minus federal income taxes for a single person claiming one deduction (whether you are married or not), payroll taxes (I.E. Social Security and Medicare), union dues, mandatory contributions to retirement, and health insurance premiums paid for the children. (The health insurance premium that is deducted from your gross earnings is the difference between the cost of insurance for your family minus the cost of insurance for you and your wife. Then you divide that difference by the total number of children who will be covered and multiply if by the number of children named in the child support order.

Once you have net monthly resources, you figure out what percentage applies to you based on the number of kids listed in the order AND the number of other kids for whom you have a legal duty to support (assuming 3 from your posting).

In your case, if there is one child listed in the order, then the percentage applied would be 14.75%, two=19%, three=24%, four=23.14%.

If I were you, I would try to hire an attorney to attend the CSRP meeting with you. Not all family law attorneys are willing to deal with the AG, so be sure and ask that specific question. If you are not able to afford an attorney, see if the Texas Legal Services Center (www.tlsc.org) can help you find one who will work at a significant discount.

Good luck!!