Good morning,
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with child support overpayments?
Long and involved story - but my ex husband believes I owe him $15k in overpaid child support as in the first couple of years of our separation, he overestimated his income. He actually didn't - it was a case of him drastically "reducing" it on his last tax return to avoid child support (he was able to do this do this as he is self employed as a contractor).
It is a long story, but basically my belief is that he "created" this debt as a bargaining chip as he wants to change our Binding child support agreement to involve no administrative assessment of his income at all (wants child support to be purely school fees and medical, whereas our current agreement is school fees/medical and and a monthly payment based on an administrative assessment). He has told me if I agree to sign the new agreement, he will forgo the $15k I "owe" him.
I have spoken to Child Support Agency about this. They informed me that due to the fact it was a private collect arrangement (i.e he paid me directly, not through CSA) they would have no involvement or interest in recovering that money and that he would need to arrange it with me privately or take me to court.
What I am having trouble working out from all the online research I've done into the legal aspects of overpayment cases is what options he would have to recover this "debt" from me, and whether the court would view it as a "debt" at all. Everything I have read about recovery of overpayments seems to only relate to cases where it is discovered that a parent has paid money to support a child that is not biologically theirs, which is not the case here.
Does anyone have any advice on how a court would likely treat this given it was an overpayment made by him due to an estimation of income (i.e his error - onus should have been on him to adjust my payments accordingly, issue was created by him) then spent by me in good faith to support the kids? Have you come across anything similar before that might give me an indication of precedent?
TIA
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with child support overpayments?
Long and involved story - but my ex husband believes I owe him $15k in overpaid child support as in the first couple of years of our separation, he overestimated his income. He actually didn't - it was a case of him drastically "reducing" it on his last tax return to avoid child support (he was able to do this do this as he is self employed as a contractor).
It is a long story, but basically my belief is that he "created" this debt as a bargaining chip as he wants to change our Binding child support agreement to involve no administrative assessment of his income at all (wants child support to be purely school fees and medical, whereas our current agreement is school fees/medical and and a monthly payment based on an administrative assessment). He has told me if I agree to sign the new agreement, he will forgo the $15k I "owe" him.
I have spoken to Child Support Agency about this. They informed me that due to the fact it was a private collect arrangement (i.e he paid me directly, not through CSA) they would have no involvement or interest in recovering that money and that he would need to arrange it with me privately or take me to court.
What I am having trouble working out from all the online research I've done into the legal aspects of overpayment cases is what options he would have to recover this "debt" from me, and whether the court would view it as a "debt" at all. Everything I have read about recovery of overpayments seems to only relate to cases where it is discovered that a parent has paid money to support a child that is not biologically theirs, which is not the case here.
Does anyone have any advice on how a court would likely treat this given it was an overpayment made by him due to an estimation of income (i.e his error - onus should have been on him to adjust my payments accordingly, issue was created by him) then spent by me in good faith to support the kids? Have you come across anything similar before that might give me an indication of precedent?
TIA
