Getting Taken Advantage Of In Child Support Arrears

(Georgia)

My husband and his first wife divorced in 1993 when their daughter was 2 years old. He faithfully paid her mostly in cash the first few years. We married in 1996 and had a daughter in 1998. The payments of $120 weekly became harder to make after our daughter was born. He spoke with her and asked her if she was willing to accept $75 weekly. She agreed and we did that for about 2 years. She began making comments about it, so I got another job and we started paying the full amount again. My husband is a machinist and purchased a machining business in 2003. After that time our finances took a downward spiral. We did get behind on the payments. We paid something every month up until 2005. There were 9 months during 2005 that we didn’t make a payment. We lost the business that year along with both our vehicles. Our home was foreclosed in 2004 due to money problems. We filed for bankruptcy early in 2006 and a few months later the ex went to child support recovery for back child support.

My husband had just found a job when we received the notice. She claimed that we owed $68,903.78 with $29,540.78 of that being interest. She went back to day one (we don't have all those records). We knew right away that that figure was incorrect. I began going back over the records that we had and found many payments that we had made that she had not listed with CSE (one for $1000.00). We made an appointment to meet at the CSE office with her and an attorney for the state supposedly. We disputed the amount and even had the numbers there with us. The attorney wouldn't even look at them. He told us that to keep from going to court the next day we need to sign papers stating agreeing to an increase in the income deduction that had already began. We asked for a review of the case and paid them $100 to do this. He said after the papers from both parties were back that we could schedule an appointment to meet in his office to discuss the actual amount owed. That is the last we heard of it.


We made repeated attempts to find out what happened with the case review and sent several letters stating that we did not agree with the amount listed. No one from the CSE office ever contacted us. We decided to wait until his daughter turned 18 and then deal with the situation. To make a long story short, my step daughter is now 18. We don’t owe any more for current support but still owe approximately. $9500. The CSE says we owe $26,235.64. This does not include any interest. We contacted the ex to try to deal with this without going through CSE. She refused. My question is what are our chances if we get an attorney to get the amount down? What about a statue of limitations (Georgia)? What should we do? We want to buy a house. We are living in my parents’ house have horrible credit.

We are not trying to get out of what is owed but we would like to be able to afford a home for our family. His ex has been remarried for several years now and she has no other children. They built a home a few years ago and have a rental property. And yet she is bound and determined to get every penny she can out of us. We just need to know what road to take so that we can put this behind us. On June 19 of this year my husband contacted CSE and asked about the results of the review and the case worker didn't know. She said that she would have to check into it and we have not heard another word about it. Would it be better to try to deal with the CSE people or get our own attorney? Money is an issue. Please Help!

Desperate in Georgia