One of the most important parental duties is to provide the financial support necessary to successfully care for the parent’s child. If parents are separated or facing a divorce, one of the parents may be given child custody while the other will ordinarily pay child support. Even if that parent is more than willing to pay the necessary support, he or she will still have to navigate the complexities of the legal terms of the relevant court order along with the applicable Tennessee laws.
Divorced Tennessee residents are no strangers to the problems that may arise in relation to child support modification. In this respect, mention may be made of the father who was recently ordered imprisoned despite the fact that he paid his share of child support and frequently visited his child. The child support terms had been modified without his knowledge, which resulted in his owing almost $3,000. He apparently hastened to pay this debt as soon as it was discovered. However, he was further ordered by the court to pay another $3,000 for his ex-wife’s attorney fees.
Another allegation raised against the father was that he might have been visiting his child too often. If that was true, modification of visitation rights was yet another term of the child custody agreement of which he had been unaware.
Predicaments of this sort relating to child support modification may be avoided if a parent seeks experienced legal help for tackling such issues. A lack of knowledge about all the rights and conditions involved may otherwise prove to be at best a headache and, at worst, a disaster for a loving parent.
Source: MemphisRap.com, “Father gets jail time for overpaying child support, visiting son too often,” Jan. 7, 2014
