How to Pay Back Child Support

August 9th, 2009 by Mike

Picture this: You’re young, married to the person of your dreams. You decide that you’re going to have kids, and before you know it, you’re the proud parent of a newborn girl. About five years pass, and the marriage has started to become a bit chippy. Your wife proclaims that it’s about time you two went your separate ways. It’s time for a divorce.

And then, it hits you. The day the two of you get divorced. To make things worse, the judge lays down the law and tells you that you have to pay child support. For the first few months, your payments are on time and nobody’s got a problem. But what happens when you neglect to pay your ex-spouse the cash that she rightfully deserves? (Or he, depending on who has to fork over the dough.)

Here are a few tips on how to pay back child support:

Take it right out of the paycheck

It’s almost like having the bank take money out of your paycheck and depositing it towards something big, like a car. But instead of the bank taking the money, the state will take it out instead. It’s a quick method of making sure your payments are on time, and the only way you’re going to notice that your payments are being sent is if you look at your paycheck in the first place.

Western Union

If you don’t have the state taking money out of your paycheck, you can always go to a grocery store or somewhere else that has a Western Union and send money from one location to another. Good for anyone who doesn’t live in the same state as their child. All you do is go to the grocery store of your choice, provided they do money order transfers, and pay the amount of your child support there. The money order will go to wherever the ex-spouse and child are, and they’ll receive it from the location you send it to.

Cash directly to the ex

If the ex-couple is on speaking terms, a direct hand-off of money is acceptable. You could hand off cash, or if you prefer, you can hand a check to the ex-spouse so he/she can cash it. Either way, works better when you’re living in the same state.

Those are just some of the ways that a divorced person, male or female, can pay back child support. There are other ways to do so, branching off of some of the ideas I suggested, but all of them are better than not paying it at all and having one lump sum getting deducted from what you were going to get from taxes, which in some cases is the last thing anyone wants to do.