My husband has been paying child support since September 2007 in the amount of $425. This is an agreement between the parents (never married) recorded at the court house and he pays it directly to her. Since Spring 2008 he has been unemployed earning only $900 per month from unemployment but has continued to pay child support on time each month. The child’s mother has worked on and off but has been employed for 1 year this August. The child is 5 and will start Kindergarten next month. The mother has decided that she isn’t going to work when the child starts school and that she will go to community college instead. The child and mother live with grandmother as they have for the past 3 1/2 years (mother has primary custody), therefore she has no housing expense. The child is not going to be in any before or after school type program so there is no child care expense as there has been in the past.
This doesn’t seem fair that the mother can just decide not to work, which will obviously mean that she will use child support to help support herself since she will have no income.
Can we have child support modified? If so do we need an attorney to do this? If no attorney is needed how do we do it ourselves?