Navigating child support guidelines: DIY or DHS?
Asking for my son, can he fill out the child support guidelines, both parties sign it at the county clerk’s office and file it for a judge’s approval or would it be better for him to open up his own child support case with DHS? That is the question that we have. Should you do your own child support guidelines and essentially circulate them in an agreed order or open up a child support case with DHS? Well, that depends on a lot of factors.
So first off, filling out the child support guidelines is not all that simple if you don’t have any experience doing it. So if you know how to do it to follow the statutes or know how to use the calculator to find one of those online, then that’s great. Also, if it’s talking about an initial child support order that it’s not enough just to have that order, you’ve got to open a case. So you don’t have to open it in DHS administrative court if you don’t want to, but it’s got to be open somewhere. It’s got to be open in the county court.
Understanding the Process
If this is a new one, it doesn’t sound like the parties are married, so you’re looking at filing a paternity action. So filing a petition to establish paternity custody visitation child support, you probably want to put it all in at once. Once that is filed, then you can talk about drafting up an agreed order. That agreed order would also include, as an attachment likely, the child support guidelines with that amount.
If the parties agree to that, that’s fantastic. Then they can both sign off on it, drop it off in the judge’s box. The judge signs it, you file it with the court, circulate file stamped certified copies of that, and then you’re done. You’ve got that child support order. But it’s not real clear here whether there is a prior filing or not. So maybe this is a modification. If there’s a modification, you don’t need to file a new petition, but you need to file in that same previous case.
Consider Your Options
You file a motion to modify. You’ve got to open it up before you can enter the order. So file up the motion to modify, and then you can circulate an agreed order that then resolves that motion to modify. If both parties sign off on it and it’s agreed, that’s great. Get it to the judge, the judge signs it, file it with the court, get your certified copies, and you’re good to go. But then the question becomes, do you know how to draft those motions? Do you know how to draft those orders that not only comply with Oklahoma statute, but with the way that local judge likes to do it?
Because sometimes different judges like to handle things differently. So if so, that’s great. You can do it on your own. If not, then you can hire a drafting service. If it’s agreed, you can hire Tulsa family law attorneys. But if you want to try to avoid those expenses, maybe that’s what we’re talking about here, in which case you could open up a case with DHS Child Support Enforcement and see if they would handle those filings for you.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
Should you do that? Maybe you can save a little bit of money, but also it may delay things quite a bit. So it depends which side this is on. Is this going to mean that you have to wait longer to get child support? Or does it mean that there’s a time period that you may avoid paying child support? Because they can only go back, in a paternity case, they can only go back two years for child support. The other issue is, is this just child support or do we need custody and visitation orders?
If you need custody and visitation orders, then you can’t get those in DHS Administrative Court. All they do is determine paternity and child support. So if you’re a dad and you want to get your rights established, get custody orders in place, get visitation orders in place, if that’s not already done, then you’re definitely going to want to be in county court. So hopefully that answers your question, but I do have some more questions for you to answer it better. So if you’re dealing with this circumstance, give us a call, talk to a Tulsa attorney about your specific circumstances, get legal advice for your case.
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