When you and your ex broke up, you were both ordered to share possession of and access to your child. You have a set schedule that you follow every week or every month.
Additionally, your spouse was ordered to pay child support. This was done in part because the child lives with you more often, meaning that you are going to have a lot of daily costs to cover. It’s also because your ex earns more money than you do and you need that support.
Everything went fine for the first year, but now your ex has stopped paying child support. At first, they claimed that they just forgot to send the payment or that they were late for some other reason, but now they have missed multiple months and they’re showing no signs of getting back on track. To force them to meet their financial obligation, can you deny their visitation rights or their child custody time?
You can never deny access to your child over missing support payments
Many people assume that this is a good tactic to use, figuring that it will at least get their ex’s attention. It feels fair to them since they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly with the lack of payment – and they have.
But it’s important to remember that you can never deny visitation time that has been ordered by the court. This is true even if your ex is not paying child support and has violated that order. It is a separate issue. If you try to deny your ex-spouse access to your child, you could hurt your own parental rights and lose primary physical possession of your child.
Rather than resorting to something drastic and illegal like this, take the time to look into the legal steps you can take to get your spouse to pay what is due.