My husband and I have four children together. My husband has been married before and has three children via that marriage. He and his ex-wife have been battling it out for years. After our fourth child was born the final Order was finally signed awarding his ex-wife alimony, credit card payments, child support, attorney fees and a distributive award. My husband is in the process of attempting to appeal the Order as the Order requires him to pay 120% of his income. In the Order it does allot funds to be used for the financial care of our children, but the financial reality is my husband just doesn’t make enough money. My husband only kept $4000 to pay his debts and sent his ex-wife more than $40,000 and was still only able to fully cover the alimony and child support. Because he is missing the other payments to his ex-wife, they’ve already incarcerated him once for Contempt of Court for failure to pay. This same court order allots about $1800 for the care of the children he and I have together, but that money just isn’t there after he attempts to meet this order. I am tired of my children going without, but I don’t want to cause another reason for my husband to be incarcerated. I am thinking about using the court order and using it to file for Child Support through DSS and have the money directly garnished so my husband will be legally blocked from sending that amount to cover alimony, but my husband and I are still married and live together with no plans of separating. But I believe the children’s welfare needs to come first, before alimony or attorney’s fees, but the Judge isn’t listening and continues to threaten incarceration so my husband can’t provide for the younger four children. As there mother, there should be something I can do.
I’m not sure I entirely understand your question. It sounds like you are wondering if you can get child support payments for your own children even though you are still married, living under the same roof, both taking care of the children, and sharing custodial responsibilities of the children. The answer to this is no. Child support is calculated based on the income of the parents and the number of nights the child spends with each parent.
Your husband can always file a motion to modify child support. In order to modify the existing child support order, he will need to show a substantial change in circumstances has occurred since the order was issued. To learn more about that process check out our article: how to modify child support.