Legal Question in Family Law in Utah

Re: child support

First, my state's laws might differ from yours, so you will need to review your state laws. Because you don't include any facts with your questions, I assume you want only a little procedural information.

Briefly, in my state, if Child Support Enforcement Division (CSED) calculates child support, it will notify the obligor and send a financial affidavit for the obligor to complete and return. CSED calculates the support amount and notifies obligor, along with instructions for objecting. If the obligor doesn't object within the time limit, the proposed order becomes an order. If the payee goes to court to get a child support order, again, the obligor is notified and has an opportunity to respond. If the obligor doesn't respond, the payee wins by default. That's the "nutshell" version. If you have a CSED support order to which you object, assuming your agency is similar to mine, follow the instructions for objecting. If it's a court support order, you file an objection to support order.

Regarding custody (in my state "parenting"), when one person files a Petition for Parenting Plan, the other parent files a response objecting to that plan and proposing an alternative, or doesn't respond and is defaulted. How do you get "joint custody?" Again, in my state, we no longer have "custody" but use the terms "shared parenting" or "parenting plan." But anyway -- if you object to the other parent's Petition, you either sit down with the other parent and negotiate a plan or you file a Response and prove to the court that your plan for shared parenting is in the children's best interest and the other parent's plan excluding you is not. If no plan exists now and the other parent just isn't letting you have parenting time with the kids, you would petition the court to adopt your parenting plan and the other parent would respond.

If you want to know whether you personally have a case to change custody, you need to see a lawyer to determine that.