Child support is a high priority debt that you must pay no matter how difficult your financial position might appear to be.
There are a number of reasons why you need to make child support payments top priority. Quite apart from the fact that your children shouldn’t have to suffer for your financial dilemma and the necessity for you to provide them with the necessary support to ensure their welfare is looked after, you also need to be aware of the consequences of not paying child support.
Any child support court order that was written or modified after the 31st of December 1993 will automatically be deducted from your wages if you are employed. If you are self-employed or unemployed you are still legally required to make the necessary payments.
Your failure to do so can result in various different actions being taken against you including debt collectors coming to retrieve the necessary funds, getting issued with a court order to recover the outstanding money or in some circumstances you can be put in jail until you make your past due child support payments.
You can see now why Child support is a high priority debt that needs to be paid before many other debts.
There are State Departments that have wide reaching powers to collect the past due money.
If you can’t pay this money then contact them as soon as possible and work out an arrangement where you can pay off the outstanding amount by installments and then include this into your budget and prioritize it accordingly.
There are so many other areas that are affected by non-payment of child support that can impact on your ability to clear the rest of your debt including the sale of your assets to cover the cost and liens on your assets to stop you borrowing against them to clear debt.
Once your past due amount exceeds $1000 the debt will be reported to the credit reporting agencies and anyone who accesses your credit reports such as creditors, insurance companies, landlords and so on will see that you have fallen behind in your payments and this certainly doesn’t help your cause when trying to sort out your debt problems.
Make it your priority and make your life easier in the process.