New here, and have a very quick question...

[MadMav]

Hello all and Soc,

I've been reading through here for a bit, and have a quick question of my own.

My girlfriend has been divorced for 9 months now, and the ex is taking her back to court to contest a part of the decree. In the decree it is stated that he take on the marriage debt if she agreed to a slight decrease in child support. Now is contesting the marriage dept. As of now, the judge has not thrown it out, and the court date is fast approaching. Is there a reason for her to be concerned? This is in Wyoming. Thank you for your time, I am trying to help her as much as possible, because this will more than likely end up impacting me in the near future. The custody questions will likely come too. :(

Thank you,
Maverick

[socrateaser]

>Hello all and Soc,
>
>I've been reading through here for a bit, and have a quick
>question of my own.
>
>My girlfriend has been divorced for 9 months now, and the ex
>is taking her back to court to contest a part of the decree.
>In the decree it is stated that he take on the marriage debt
>if she agreed to a slight decrease in child support. Now is
>contesting the marriage dept. As of now, the judge has not
>thrown it out, and the court date is fast approaching. Is
>there a reason for her to be concerned? This is in Wyoming.
>Thank you for your time, I am trying to help her as much as
>possible, because this will more than likely end up impacting
>me in the near future. The custody questions will likely come
>too. :(

OK, well the first thing you need to do is read the mandatory forum guidelines rev. 1.2, because if you continue to post as you are above, I will not respond to you questions in the future -- you have broken at least four of my rules, already. But, I will answer you this once.

It violates public policy in every jurisdiction for parents to bargain away their child(ren)'s right to child support. So, if the divorce decree bargains for lower child support in exchange for a property settlement, that bargain is VOID (of legal no force or effect). Therefore, either parent can return to court and request an increase in support or a redetermination of the debt allocation that was used as consideration for the support.

However, as time goes on, the value of the exchange will begin to take hold, because one person will be paying on the debt while the other will be receiving less support that cannot be retroactively increased. So, a court looking at a motion to set aside this portion of the decree would probaby treat the debt as having the remaining value existing at the time that the motion for the set aside is filed, and similarly the court would ignore any impact of child support already due and payable.

In short, the court should throw out this portion of the decree and it will make a new determination as if both this debt issue and child support were being considered for the first time (de novo review).

[4honor]

Learn something new every day. Thanks.

[MadMav]

Thank you Soc it is nice to get this information before the court date, and I am very sorry about not reading the rules. It will not happen again.

Maverick