Messages

State is CA

10 months (May) ago custody/visitation schedule was changed from EOWeekend with dad to EOweek for youngest child and EOextended weekend for oldest.  There was no change in circumstances, just alot of pressure from children's attorney because they wanted to spend more time with dad, and financial pressure to settle.

In July oldest child became unhappy at dads and began calling her attorney and writing her attorney asking for help in returning to old schedule.

In October dad gets a new job that requires him to leave before children are awake for the day and return home often after the children are asleep for the night.

Youngest child begins crying herself to sleep at mom's house every night since mid October.  Tells mom that she doesn't want to go to dads anymore she wants it back the way it was. (EOweekend) She writes letter to attorney and calls her.

Since July their attorney has called them one time (around Sept), the children were not home and so she left a message on the machine for them to call her back.

The children have called her, written her and given her a schedule of the best times to reach them. They have not heard from her again.

I got raked through the coles financially trying to fight the change to begin with and haven't financially recupperated from it yet, I don't have the money to go through another legal battle nor am I anxious to put my current marriage through that kind of stress again.

Dads new job has a result of more than doubling his child support obligation. In October we agreed to an amount of support about $200 below guideline. Dad got a raise this month, so now the agreed amount is $300 below guideline for the current schedule.

Dad and I are scheduled to get together to discuss CS and custody of the children. He wants both kids 50% and the kids and I want to return to the old schedule.

1) How can I offer to keep the current amount of child support in exchange for changing back to the old schedule, without getting in trouble for extortion (this would be about $700 below guideline with the change)?

2) Does children's attorney not have to respond to the children since there is no action before the court?

3) Can children's attorney even bring an action before the court on behalf of the kids?

Any recomendations?

Had to share my husbands experience with this. His ex claimed that she was paying 100% of the household cost while her Boyfriend was living with her and she was asking for CS from my husband.

Anyway Judge decided that he would impute Boyfriends share of the household expenses to BM income, therefore increasing her disposable income. Turned out that then she would owe my DH CS.

I don't remember how the judge decided this but it had something to do with extraordinary difference in living costs, I think.

Hope this helps, it may be something to look into. We are in CA too.

I wanted to add the following as a suggestion for calculating CA child support. Xspouse offers a demo version of their software for free.
 
The only difference between it and the version the courts use (at least the courts in PLACER and SACRAMENTO Counties) is that you can't save and it says NOT FOR COURT USE at the bottom. Their website is

http://www.xspouse.com/default.htm

and the software has a function called Wiz/Pro that will walk you through what to put in each input area.

It is great, I have used it for several years now in my own case and recomend it to anyone in CA. You do have to download a new version each year though.

Soc,

The state is California, so this is related to proposition 13.

My husband and I signed a contract to purchase a home in June of 2003. The contract gave the builder of the home until June of 2004 to complete the home. If after June of 2004 the home wasn't completed then we (my husband and I) would heave to option to walk and get our deposit back. It wasn't completed until June 2005. We decided to wait for the home to be built and still purchased the home.  The purchase price of the home was 640K, the contract price of the home.

The County sent their supplemental tax assessment to use that revalues the home upon change in ownership. They are assessing the property at 1 mil instead of the purchase price of the home.  They say that it is assessed at the full market value at the time of closing. The lenders appraisal of the home at the time of closing was 985K.

I have read about prop 13 and its intention but can't come to a clear understanding of it. Some things I have read say it is valued at the time of sale. Which I interpret to mean June 2003.  Others say when the property changes hands or is newly contructed. Both of which also apply.

Any insite would be helpful but my specific questions are:

1) Is my interpretation of the sale date way off, is the sale date the date of closing or the date contract was signed, or something completely different?

2) If they are correct and the property is assessed at the 1 mil. Then would we have a case against the builder, because if they had completed the home within the timeframe of the contract our tax base would have been the purchase price of the home? (I say this based on neighbors who signed around the time we did and their homes were completed timely and their basis is purchase price.)

Off topic again:

3) A few years back you said you would reveal the purpose of your volunteering your time to this board in September 2005, and I think since then it was pushed to November 2005. Do you have any intentions of still revealing such information? Or did I miss it.

I realize this isn't your area of expertise, but form what I can summize you are likely a resident of California and therfore I hope that you may know a little bit about this subject.

Thank you for your time and I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
 

SD took candy that I purchased for her to raise funds for a school field trip with her to BM.  I have been informed that BM took the candy from SD and sold it for her.  Bm is refusing to return the money to SD or to me.  She has offered to make a direct payment to the school for the amount of the proceeds, however part of the money earned is to go towards reimbursing me for the cost of purchasing the candy to begin with.

We have emailed her and SD has asked her directly for the money.  The emails have been ignored and she has told SD she will not return the money.  We also suggested that she purchase new candy for SD to sell over here and then we would use those funds to reimburse our expenses.

1) Is there anything we can do to make her return the money? Any suggestions would be appreciated as our second payment is due shortly.

In regards to #3&4 above:

When I entered a child of another relationship living with mother (me) the x-spouse software calculated a hardship deduction for that child.

My husband and myseld have a child together, x spouse calulates automatically a hardship at 100%. My ex states that the hardship should only be calclated at 50% as my spouse has 50% responsibility for supporting our new child. I can somewhat understand that logic but then it eludes me as to when a 100% hardship for a new child would be appropriate. There is a place to change the calculation to 50% in the software.

I hope that make it clearer as to what I am looking for.

1)  Do I calculate a hardship deduction for a child of another relationship at 50% or 100%?

In Regards to health insurance:

Ex pays $450 for medical that does not cover the kids, just himself and his wife. He pays $50 for the children to have dental insurance.

We pay $350 a month for health that covers the children, yet would cost the same if they weren't covered. There are 7 people covered by this insurance.

1) For my ex's : Would you take the total of his $450 and the children's dental of $50 and divide that by (the number of people in house or just the childrens dental since they are seperate?

2)  For ours: Would the fact the the costs is the same regardless of the children being covered change your earlier answer, or should we still use $100?

3) Should I include any amount not listed under health insurance under other medical expense, or again is that just expenses of the children support is calculated for?

Thanks again

Soc-

State is California

Child Support is collected through DCSS and has been a wage garnishment. Ex just wuit his job and is starting a new one. We are in the process of determining a new support amount. Ex would like to make payments directly to DCSS rather than have a garnishment.  

I spoke to DCSS case worker who stated that she didn't believe that it is possible to pay them directly and that it needed to be a garnishment.  I am leery of closing my DCSS case and allowing him to pay me directly until he can show a pattern of paying timely.

Assuming we can come to an agreement on the amount of support, we hope to write up an agreement and file with the courts for the Judges signature.

1) Is there some wording that we can use that would make it so he could make direct payments to DCSS rather than a wage garnishment and have the courts and DCSS recognize this?

2) When calculating support in the section that asks for health insurance, do you include the cost for the entire household or just the children the support is calculated for?

3) Is it customary or common for hardships (new child of current marriage) to be calculated at 50% as there is another person (spouse) responsible for them as well?

4) If the answer to 3 is yes then could you give me an example of when one would use 100% for a hardship?


Thank you in advance

I'm not an attorney...

With that said you did say all opinions are appreciated.

I think your summer visitation would begin on Friday at 12 noon and end the Sunday 9 days later at 6 pm.

Hope this helps...

I am not an attorney, but I am a notary. While I realize laws are different state to state (I'm in CA) I wouldn't notarize the document on her belhalf. You could be considered as having a financial interest in the document being signed and you obviously have and emotional interest in it being done. I think that would leave to much liability there for you if BM were to claim that she didn't in fact ask you to notarize the document or claims that she did it under duress.

My DH had a similar issue having his ex sign and notarize a document. She also refused to pay to have it done.  So we informed her we would be happy to cover the expense and offferec to pay before. We ended up giving her the $10 when she gave us the document.

Good Luck

For the last 6 years I have had support collected by the Department of Child Support Services (in California). My ex, for the first time in 9 years, brought his support obligation current in February of this year.

He is now demanding that I no longer collect support through DCSS because the liens they have placed against him are causing his fica scores to be low. I am hesitant to agree because of his history in not paying support, quitting jobs to avoid garnishment, and lying about where he was working and how much he is making.  DCSS provides services that help eliminate such dodging activities at no cost to me (other than tax dollars that I would be paying regardless if they collect the support).

I have offered that once he has established a record of keeping support current and keeping me informed of job changes and pay changes then I would consider such a request. My ex has threatened to take me to court to get the support collection removed from DCSS due to my "lack of cooperation" in agreeing to his demands.  He informed me he has already spoken with his attorney who has informed him that getting a judge to order to have child support collection removed from DSCC would be a "piece of cake".

I know that the court can do anything they want but...

1) Don't I have a right to have support collected through DCSS?

2) Can he really get a court order to get me to collect support myself?

Thanks in advance