Do I have to appear in court for child support?
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at
3:04 pm
I’m in Virginia and am filing for child support from my son’s father. I got a consultation from a lawyer and he says that I can just file through DCSE (Division of Child Support Enforcement) and I will only have to go to court for custody. Is this always the case?
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Technically speaking your lawyer is right, you don’t have to be there for the child support hearing, HOWEVER, if you aren’t your ex can make up lies!!!!
If you want your child support to get started any time soon I suggest you go, or your ex can say something like "Why should I be paying support for a kid that lives with me?" At which point the whole thing will get postponed until the court can assess where the child lives.
The first link below allows you to ask a question of VA child support services and the other give additional info. Now don’t ask legal questions just whether you have to be there or not for the hearing. In most child support cases the support part is usually decided by the court after custody is established because they have to verify everything.
I would strongly STRONGLY recommend you read this:
http://www.capsulecorp.org/custody
or alternatively:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D0%26ref_%3Dnb%5Fsb%5Fnoss%26y%3D0%26field-keywords%3Dchild%2520custody%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Daps&tag=clogui-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957