Child Support And Enforcement Penalties Lawyer
At Front Range Family Law ®, we have a serious commitment to ensuring the financial well-being of all children. To this end, we help divorced parents enforce and modify child support orders and resolve other financial conflicts.
Fulfilling Child Support Obligations
Colorado’s Child Support Services (CSS) organization uses a variety of enforcement mechanisms to force parents to fulfill their child support obligations. A parent who has failed to pay child support may experience any of the following:
- Contempt of court – this carries possible jail time and fines
- Garnishments
- Liens on property
- Credit reporting
- State and federal tax returns
- Driver’s license suspension
- Professional license suspension
The best course of action is to use mediation from a child support and enforcement penalties lawyer and identify ways to meet the children’s needs without resorting to legal or institutional penalties and petitions. We urge our clients to be very proactive about managing child support orders.
Post-Divorce Modifications As An Alternative
If you are a Wheat Ridge resident and you have experienced changes in income or child expenses, Attorney Rebecca Gumaer can help you gather the paperwork necessary to petition the Child Support Enforcement Unit in your county. It is important to retain a child support and enforcement penalties attorney and pursue a modification of the child support order before the court gets involved and before enforcement penalties are necessary.
By acting before you default on a payment, the court can review the changed financial circumstances of the parents and issue a modified child support order.
Finances and expenses can change, and you may find that the child support order needs to be increased or decreased based on your circumstances. An experienced family law attorney at Front Range Family Law ® can help you persuade the court that a financial modification is necessary.
Whether our clients seek to enforce a child support order or modify a child support order due to changed financial circumstances, our Wheat Ridge child support and enforcement penalties lawyer has the experience necessary to help.
What Colorado Courts Require Before Changing a Child Support Order
Colorado does not allow parents to renegotiate support privately. Until a judge signs a new order, the existing order is the one that counts, regardless of what the two of you have worked out in text messages or at a handoff.
To change an order, you generally have to show a change in circumstances that is both substantial and continuing. Those two words carry most of the weight, and the second one is where parents get tripped up. A month of reduced hours is not continuing. A layoff followed by comparable work eight weeks later is not continuing. A change that is expected to last is.
Colorado attaches a number to the word substantial. If support recalculated under the current guidelines comes out less than ten percent different from the current order, that difference is generally presumed not to qualify as substantial and continuing. The presumption can be challenged in limited situations, but it is the first thing to test before anything gets filed.
There is a second, narrower path. If your existing order says nothing about medical support, such as health insurance coverage or unreimbursed medical costs, the order may be open to modification without proving a substantial and continuing change.
Changes That Commonly Support a Modification
Courts look at what has actually changed since the last order was entered. The changes that tend to carry weight are financial and durable:
- A lasting increase or decrease in either parent’s income
- A job loss followed by a genuine, documented search for comparable work
- A sustained change in the number of overnights each parent has
- Work-related or school-related child care costs that begin or end
- A meaningful change in the cost of the children’s health insurance
- New medical or educational needs for a child
- One child in a multi-child order reaching emancipation
Qualifying for a modification and pursuing one are separate questions. If a recalculation moves the number by a narrow margin, the financial disclosures, mediation, and hearing time can cost more than the adjustment returns over the life of the order. A child support and enforcement penalties attorney can run the numbers first so you know whether the filing is worth making.
How the Modification Process Works
A request to modify is filed with the court that issued the original order. If Colorado’s Child Support Services already has an open case for your family, an administrative review may be available as well.
Both parents then exchange current financial information. Recent pay records, tax returns, proof of insurance premiums, and child care invoices are the documents that decide most of these cases. The new figure comes from applying the current guidelines to both parents’ circumstances as of the filing, which is why accurate and complete disclosures matter more here than argument does.
From there, the court may resolve the matter on the written filings alone, or it may direct the parents to mediation and set a hearing if they disagree about the underlying numbers. One detail worth knowing: Colorado revises its child support guidelines periodically, so an order calculated years ago can produce a different result today, even before your own circumstances are considered.
Why the Filing Date Usually Sets the Clock
This is the detail that costs parents the most money, and it is the piece most people have not heard before they call our office.
A modified order is generally effective back to the date the motion was filed. Not the date you lost the job. Not the date your co-parent’s income doubled. The date the paperwork reached the court. Every month of delay is a month calculated under numbers that no longer reflect your life, and that time is usually gone for good. A court can decline to apply the change all the way back to filing if doing so would cause undue hardship or substantial injustice, but it generally cannot reach back to a point before the motion was filed.
There is one meaningful exception. When physical care of a child has changed by court order, by agreement, or voluntarily, support may be adjusted as of the date the care actually changed, subject to a look-back limit set by statute.
One more thing worth understanding: support that has already come due is treated as a judgment. A modification changes what you owe going forward. It does not erase what has already accrued. That is the practical reason filing early protects you and waiting does not.
Contact Child Support and Enforcement Penalties Attorney Rebecca I. Gumaer
Front Range Family Law ® can help you petition the court to modify child support awards. For a free case evaluation, call 720-456-6471 or email our office for assistance.
