Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

That depends. First, child support is not stated in the Decree of Dissolution but in the Order of Child Support and the Child Support Worksheets, which are separate documents. In any dissolution of marriage in Washington State, child support must be set by the Court. If your wife has Section 8 housing, she has to have a yearly financial review where she must disclose all sources of income. That would include child support. If she fails to do that, then she could be disqualified from her Section 8 housing and lose those benefits. Child support is taken into consideration as to how much her share of the housing cost will be as a percentage of the whole amount of rent. But child support will not disqualify her from Section 8 housing altogether. You should call the housing office and make your own inquiry as to how child support is treated and considered. You must have a child support order and you should have all payments go through the Child Support Registry so that there is a clear record of all of your payments to her. Do not pay child support "under the table" as this procedure could really hurt you in the future and cause you to incur a very large obligation for child support even though you would have paid thousands of dollars to your ex-wife. As it is, you do have some possible problem in proving you have paid the amount of child support to date because it is being paid directly to your wife with no accounting of those payments. Good Luck!