Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia

Re: Jan Meehan

Any motion you make to reduce your support will only be effective for FUTURE support. The support as it becomes owed, becomes a judgment by law. You owe what you owe. The advice should have been to ask for a reduction as soon as you had a material change of circumstance (that is when your economic opportunity changed).

I do not know why you owe contribution on IRS debt. I do know that there are only two ways to be put in jail for owing money and you mentioned them both: child support and taxes.

You will be held in contempt for not obeying the court order by not paying the child support the court ordered you to pay. If you are more than $5000 in arrears the judge can suspend your drivers license (or any other state issued licnese) until it is paid. You can also be incarcerated but this sounds unlikely in your scenario. You had an economic downturn, the mother was advised of it and, in your version, forgave you immediate payment (but obviously she did not forgive you for ultimate payment).

Additionally, spousal support is very hard to reduce because it is not usually determnined by guidelines but in a divorce case by decree of the judge and if divorced, the only one who can lower it is the divorce judge, where child support is often dealt with in Juvenile & DOmestic Relations Court.

Lower if you can, the judge will probably require you to pay current support and kick in something extra towards the arrears.

Good luck

Re: Jan Meehan

Sure, you can petition for a reduction in your spousal support obligation or, perhaps, even a termination of this particular obligation if circumstances warrant.(You should, however, alert the clerk's office to the August 30th date

for the other hearing; they may wish to set both matters on the same date.)

Before you attempt to initiate any actions on your own, you would be well advised to discuss the matter with an attorney appropriately knowledgeable in this area(spousal support)of Virginia domestic relations law.