Type of Case
Child Support Enforcement
Client’s Background
Father hired me to represent him in a child support enforcement case filed against him by the Office of the Attorney General. The OAG was asking that he be jailed and fined. He was $105,000.00 behind in his child support payments and had never provided the Court Ordered health insurance on his child.
The Client’s Specific Challenges
The challenge was that he did not make any effort to pay. He paid zero $-0-. If he had paid anything, I could at least have argued that he was paying to the best of his ability. Likewise, he did not do his visitation so he left the mother with no support monetarily or morally.
Objective
To keep him out of jail so he could keep his job. Establish a payment plan and reduce the amount of current child support.
Solution
Since he was so far in the hole, I decided to spend additional time on his case and see if I had any objections I could make. I went to the courthouse and read every single word in the file. I went through every single page. I did legal research and discovered that I had a valid legal argument that I could make. I discovered that there was a mistake in the document (citation) they served him with. Therefore, I did a collateral attack on the child support order itself and asked the Court to declare it null and void and set it aside.
Results
The Court set aside the child support order for lack of jurisdiction because the service document was defective. The Court ruled that my client had never been properly served. The Court wiped out $105,000.00 in back child support. The OAG had to start over from the beginning and serve him correctly.
