Spouse's assets & CS

[Stel]

The state or country I am talking about is: IL

Hi,
My fiance has a child from a previous relationship. They were never married. He has 20% of his wages garnished from his paycheck for child support

Once we are married, is his ex "go after" my income? Can she go after our co-mingled money and assets (boat/ homes, etc). Can she go after 401k's and any other investments that are his, mine or ours?

Once we have children, does the support he pays her get reduced?

Thanks to anyone who repsonds.

 

[AngryMom]

Sorry, Just saw this

In a nutshell, NO.

There is already an existing order for wage withholding based on his current income. I have no idea how she will react about your impending nuptual however, so it is always better to err on the "safe" side. Your home and other "real" assets that are co-owned with him will be fine. I don't think you'd need to worry about that.

Now on the financial end, that's another whole different story. It is always best (in my opinion as a second wife) to keep your finances separate when there are child support orders. Why? Because it is MUCH easier to keep them separate in the first place than to try to figure out what's what for the courts whenever it is time for a review.

For instance...The first year my darling second husband and I were married, we filed joint. Big mistake! Because of a temporary lay-off at his job, he got three months in arrears in child support and there was an IRS tax intercept attached to our return. My options were 1. let it slide and allow it pay off his arrears, or 2. claim injured spouse and get my portion of the return back. I chose #1, but the fact remains that if we had kept our finances separate, it wouldn't have been an issue whatsoever, and I wouldn't have been angry at him or his witchy ex for months for taking "my money!"

Now about the other issue of if you have children will his support go down. In a word, NO. Just because he moves on and creates a second family, it does not detract from his obligation to his first child. The only means of receiving a reduction is if his personal income decreases significantly (such as paycut, layoff, job loss, etc) or there is a significant change in circumstances as defined by his court's jurisdiction.

So, on the good side, you are already pretty much aware of what your life will look like with him once you are married. You know what he pays and his obligations. I would also suggest that keep your finances separate, at least until he no longer has a child support obligation. He may be offended, but if you explain why he should understand. I mean I doubt he'd want her to have your money either....

Good luck and congratulations!

 

[stevesrm1995]

Had a very similar situation. My wife and her ex., both waved their rights to child support from the other. I think this was initially done for his benefit, because in the beginning she had the kids and simply wanted nothing more to do with him. Well, long story short, his brother is a very prominent Atty. and has a lot of respect in the law community up in the county and district where he practices, so when the ex got the kids for a summer visit, got his brother to file a petition to get custodial custody of the kids. At the time, my wife and I barely made enough money to pay the bills, let alone, hire an atty., from a different district, take off work to go to NY,(we lived in IN) and try to fight him in court. Well, needless to say he got what he asked for. A few years later, I re-entered the Army, we started doing better financially, from what her ex tried to imply initially, they were going through some financial difficulty. Well, after explaining that she wasn't working, his ex and his new wife tried to imply that if she didn't start paying something to help with the kids, he wouldn't allow her to see them. Well she started stressing out, encouraging me that we should pay them something, from (my income), or they may take her to court for child support and that they could go after my income. Well, I checked with JAG and a couple of other divorce Atty's, bottom line, not your kids, you can't be held responsible to pay support from your income. Now when I told them this and offered that if they were struggling financially, that we'd be more than happy to have the kids, they were quick to change it to being a matter of principle, that they didn't need our money. Well, go figure.