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Social Media Use and Child Support

Social Media Use and Child Support

In Illinois and nationwide, many custodial parents are left without the child support that they should be receiving from their children's noncustodial parents. In most situations, this is because the parents who should be paying child support simply cannot afford to do so because of employment or other issues. However, others do make enough money but refuse to aid their children financially. Sometimes they get caught when a connection is found with their social media use and child support situation.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one father is facing felony charges after post on the social networking site Facebook how much money he makes and that he had tickets to a Green Bay Packers game, and the father's social media postings have brought it to the court's attention that he can afford to pay what he had been ordered to. He had paid $189 to his son in child support in more than three years. The boy's mother says that the small amount of money was paid simply to keep the father out of jail.

One Milwaukee assistant district attorney says that parents like this think that they're not going to get caught because nobody cares. She says that the most important part of her job is differentiating between those who cannot pay and those who will not pay child support. Social media has become an important tool for that task. In fact, one mother posted on social media that she was getting a nose job during a time when she owed child support.

When a noncustodial parent cannot pay the amount of child support that a family court has ordered because of such issues as a loss of employment, the amount can be modified to fit that parent's current financial situation. If a noncustodial parent refuses to pay an amount of child support that he or she can afford, a lawyer could work to hold that parent accountable in court.

Source: Fox 6, "Facebook posts get deadbeat parents busted for not paying child support", Stephen Davis and Meghan Dwyer, July 16, 2014

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