Barbosa Family Law, P. C. handles child support cases as well as any other family law case. We receive many calls from persons wanting to get child support from the other parent. A lot of times, the persons are not married to each other; however, they have had a child. Without the persons being in a lawful marriage, the process to establish a child support obligation requires a suit to establish the parent child relationship to be filed with the Court.
We always recommend to persons seeking to establish child support to contact the Texas Attorney General Office, child support division, for legal assistance. The reason we suggest the state attorney general is that there will be no cost to the person seeking child support from the other parent. The state also has the ability to order the parties to take paternity tests to confirm the paternity of the parties. This is especially important to the person that is contesting the paternity of the child.
It is extremely important to the male parent that paternity testing be completed before the passing of more than 4 years from the birth of the child. Sometimes the time period can be extended. However, the 4 year limit can be a major problem to a person seeking to get paternity testing ordered by a court. The state attorney general’s office will take care of the paternity testing usually at a great savings to the person seeking the testing.
Many times the person that is alleged to be the biological parent signed the birth certificate acknowledging the child as their biological child. Sometimes this can be an issue in the courtroom. However, in these cases we usually suggest the person to retain legal counsel to guide them thru the legal system. Certain criteria must be alleged in the response to the court if the parent acknowledged paternity in signing the birth certificate.
The custodial parent will usually request child support, medical support, child support arrears, and medical support arrears. The parent is allowed to request child support arrears for a period of 4 years in most circumstances. The courts will usually order the noncustodial parent to pay the 4 years of back child support together with current child support and maybe medical support and medical support arrears.
The custodial parent must also be prepared to give the other parent visitation rights. With the duty to pay child support for a child also comes the right to have possession and access to the child. So, if you are the custodial parent wishing to get child support from the other parent, be prepared for the other parent to demand their visitation rights. I will provide more information on visitation rights in a future article.
If any issue of child support or visitation needs to be addressed, please contact our law firm for assistance and information.