Reply #69: From what I heard going thru my divorce [View All]

[rainbow4321]

is that if a custodial parent tries to deny the non-custodial parent visitation, even IF that noncust. parent refuses to pay child support, the custodial parent will be held in contempt for not following the court ordered visitation schedule.
It's that way because in the eyes of the court, visitation and child support are 2 totally different issues, you cannot stop one if you are upset with the other.
So, technically, you can have a dad/mom who doesn't pay up CS, but they still can take the kid(s) for visitation. The parent who tries to prevent that visit is the one who would get in trouble.
Here in my state, the court usually will get the ordered CS withheld from the nc parent's paycheck. So the $$ never makes it to the nc parent, it goes right from his/her company to the CS office then to the child. If you have a nc parent who doesn't hold down a job or gets paid under the table, the courts have no paycheck to withhold **from**.
My ex got raises and bonuses over a 5 yr period but never told the court. I got TX attorney general involved, he represented my kids for free (well kept secret here in TX..it is a free service), forced the ex to cough up his payroll info, and as a result my kids then got an extra $400/month that their father was refusing to own up to.
The catch: even though he with held their extra $$ for 5 yrs, the state rule says that the correct payment starts the day that the judge rules he has to pay the correct amount (that court date). Didn't matter that he should have been paying the correct amount for 5 years, (totalling like $12,000)..he was not forced to pay the back cs. Yet his visitation schedule never skipped a beat--this was back when he actually followed a visitation schedule.