I need information

[mfar1957]

Originally I received my divorce in Arlington Texas.  My Ex and the children were to reside there.  I've paid child support from the beginning via wage garnishment since 1999.

I received notice in 2001 that my ex-wife wanted to move to San Antonio, I agreed and we hammered out visitation rights and so forth.  I found that her mother had moved to San Antonio and bought a house.  Later I found that my ex had not moved to San Antonio yet, but the children had been moved in with her mother this was against my wishes, I thought my children were living with and would be in future, my ex-wife.

My ex-mother-in-law claimed this was a temporary situation just to get the kids in school and that my ex-wife would be moving in shortly.  None of the worked out.

My visitation was constantly veing interferred with and the situation between my ex-mother-in-law and myself deterioted, the children then 13 and 15 no longer wished to visit, there were a number of reasons for all this that I won't go into at this time, but needless to say it's been very painful.

Her mother filed for and was granted custody under Texas law as the children had lived with her and desired to continue to do so for over 6 months.  I had continued to pay child support via the court's garnishment in Tarrant County, though I'm not sure who was being awarded the money.

2 weeks ago, I recieved notice that my support amount was being raised from 800 to 1000 a month and that I owed back 21,700 to the mother.  The new garnishment occurred April 16th.  My wages are still being hit under the old garnishment as well.  Needless to say I'm hurting.  As far as I know, I'm not in arrears at all, I believe that the money just wasn't being transferred to my ex-mother-in-law.  Or my ex-wife has continued to collect it and not let on to her mother.  

It's possible either the Ex-wife has continued to keep it, or it's sitting in an account undispersed in Tarrant county Tx.

[patton]

First off you need a copy of ALL the child support you've paid from day one and who it was sent to.

You can call the Attorney General's office and they will be able to direct you where you can get this.   Different areas have the different records.

And then start hitting the Attorney General's office with emails.  I learned that calling the Texas AttorneyGeneral's office gets you nowhere...in one ear and out the other.  But sending emails to everybody and their dog will get somebodies attention.

Do you know who your case worker is?  Do you have a CIN number?  A Case Number?  Be sure to reference all that stuff in your email.

Some of these people may not be there anymore, but it's a start at least.

[email protected]
[email protected]. us
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Of course you know Greg Abbott is the Attorney General, Cynthia Bryant is the asst. Attorney General. and Kathy McMichael is under them.
Kathy is probably the person you will hear from.

If you get an email back either add the cs after the @ OR DROP IT.... if you talk with anyone their email would be their first name and a dot and their last name and then @cs.oag.state.tx.us

Good Luck!  Let us know. Texas AG is sloooooow, but at least the emails get their attention. Also give them phone numbers where you can reached ASAP!

[mfar1957]

Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for the information.  I'm still working on getting it straightened out I've set up complaints with the child support agency and I'm going to send letters to everyone on your list.

A lawyer friend has jumped in and made a couple calls free of charge.  

He tells me that if I don't get the the judgement removed it will ruin my credit.  Of course life isn't fair and just the nature of having to put up with it when you're innocent just doesn't seem right.  However, I intend to hang in there until all is completely straightend out.

It would appear that the funds have been sitting at Tarrant County Child Support Agency and nothing was done with them.  I just don't understand and I'm going to have to dig pretty deep to find out what's happened.