The Start Date of Child Support Orders Must Be Clear
Video Transcribed: New changes in the law regarding child support modifications may change the date that your modification goes into effect. My name is James Wirth, I am an Attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we’re talking about some of the new laws that went into effect on November 1st, 2021. Specifically, these are dealing with some changes to the child support guidelines from Senate Bill 421.
And there’s a number of changes that went into effect. But for the purpose of this video, we’re talking about the start date of a modification. Under the previous version of the law, if you file for a child support modification and that modification is ultimately granted later when you go to court and eventually get an order, it would automatically unless stated otherwise in the order, have a start date of the date that you filed your motion.
So if you file your motion today, three, four months from now, it’s granted, it is effective as of the date you file your motion. However, now the default has changed by the statute.
And now what the statute says is that in order a modification shall be effective on the first day of the month following the date that the motion to modify was filed. So that’s set back the start date as far as a month based on this new law. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.
This is just the default. So it’s more important than ever to make sure that you, in your child support orders, are clear on when the start date is. And if the modification is favorable to you, you want to make sure that it goes all the way back to the date the motion was filed as opposed to the day that it went into effect.
And then as an attorney, if we’re representing somebody who is going to have a detriment by the modification, perhaps they’re the receiver of child support and the child support amount is going down, they’re going to want it to be effective later.
In which case, we may be better off having the order not state specifically when it starts because that way, it’ll start the next first of the month after the motion to modify was filed by potentially an additional month of the better benefits for our client.
So it’s just one little tidbit of information that you need to know in order to know how to draft orders that are favorable for your client. If you’re dealing with the circumstances of modification, want to know how these new laws affect you, you’re probably going to want to talk to a Tulsa child support attorney, more specifically about that to get legal advice privately. If you want to talk to somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com
