Your ex-spouse was ordered to pay child support, but they almost never do it. It wasn’t always this way. They did pay the child support to start, but it has been a couple of years since the divorce and they’ve essentially stopped paying you.
You want to get your child support back, and you know that you have a right to it. But you’d rather not go through the court process. Since you and your ex share custody of the children, you may just decide that you’ll give them an ultimatum. Until they pay child support, they don’t get to see the kids. Are you allowed to do this?
You can never deny child custody rights
It’s understandable that you’re frustrated that you’re not getting the money for your family that you deserve. And it’s also understandable that you would consider this step as a way to get your ex to pay, knowing that they want to spend time with the children.
But the fact of the matter is that you can never deny someone else’s custody rights. You can’t tell them they’re no longer allowed to see the children if they have a court order saying that they can. This would violate their rights.
You may argue that they are not paying child support and that they are violating your rights, and that’s true. But that still doesn’t give you the right to keep them from seeing the kids.
What happens if you do?
If you do this anyway and they decide to pursue legal action, the court may even determine that you are no longer allowed to have custody of your children because you’ve been abusing that privilege and keeping them from your ex. In the long run, this could wind up costing you time with the kids.
As you can imagine, this is not a risk that you want to take. You don’t want to jeopardize your future with the children over the money that you’re owed.
Rather than taking things into your own hands, consider all of the legal options that you have to ensure that your ex-spouse begins paying child support again as they were ordered to during the divorce.