Oklahoma Child Support is Statutory
Video Transcribed: Back child support can be waived by the agreements of the parties in Oklahoma. I’m Oklahoma Lawyer James Wirth. We’re continuing this series related to Oklahoma child support. And today, we’re talking about waiving child support arrearages. Can it be done?
And the answer to this is statutory. It is in Title 43, Section 112, Subsection A3. And what it provides is that the court, “May modify or change any order whenever circumstances render the change proper either before or after final judgment in the action; provided, the amount of the periodic child support should not be modified retroactively or payment of all or a portion of past due amounts waived,” so it says you can’t waive it, “except,” then here’s the exception, “by mutual agreement of the obligor and the obligee.”
And the obligor, that’s the person that has to pay child support. The obligee, that’s the person that is the recipient, the person that gets the benefit of that child support. And this says that you can’t waive child support arrearages except when both those parties agree.
Now, if DHS is an interested party, you’re going to need DHS to agree as well. But most of the time under these circumstances, DHS will agree if the obligee agrees. If they’re willing to waive back child support, usually DHS will sign off on that unless they think there’s some coercion address involved, in which case they may push back a bit.
But this is something my firm handles all the time, particularly if we have huge amounts of interest that have gone over a large number of years, sometimes where a party may not have even known about the child support obligation because perhaps they were served by publication.
And then they keep accruing that money, and then interest and interest year after year, they find out about it later, they have this huge arrearage. Or maybe it’s just they got behind, a lot of time, a lot of interest. And now it makes sense where we can my office or somebody else, and we try to negotiate this. And we say, “Hey, we may have an opportunity to get a lump sum if you’re willing to waive the remainder of that.”
And we’ve been able to discharge a lot of child support on that basis due to those agreements. Because as long as the parties are in agreement, the statute does allow for the waiving of back due to
child support. And if you have something that you can provide as leverage, such as a lump-sum payment rather than having to be paid out month by month, year after year, that may be something that the other party is interested in and may agree to.
So a lot of times, we can get those types of deals done. And it is allowable by law. So if you’ve got any questions about that or you want to talk about another issue under Oklahoma law or child support in Oklahoma, you’re going to want to talk to an Oklahoma attorney privately, confidentially about that. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
