New Jersey parents should take advantage of child support amnesty

New Jersey parents who have fallen into arrears with their child support payments should take advantage of a one-week amnesty offered to help them catch up.

According to one Camden County freeholder, 400,000 New Jersey children are dependent on child support. In almost 60 percent of those cases, a parent has fallen behind on payments.

Many factors can cause parents to lag behind on their child support payments. Loss of a job, reduction of work hours, illness and other factors can result in penalties being added to the principle and even jail time for the parent. This program offers parents a good faith attempt to make back payments or establish payment plans that can help them avoid unfortunate legal actions and do what is right for their offspring.

Parents who are willing to set up reasonable payment plans can have warrants for their arrest on non-support charges purged from the system. Even if they come in and fail to work out a payment plan, they will be allowed to leave, although their warrants will remain active.

Most non-custodial parents love their children and want to offer them the best life possible. Not paying child support can cause rifts to form in the parent-child relationship that can take years to heal, and many relationships never fully recover.

Another way to solve the situation is to work with a family law attorney who may be able to get the custodial parent back into court and get a reduction in the child support judgment or even get some or all of the arrearages waived to reflect the current financial circumstances of the non-custodial parent.

Source: CBS Philly, “N.J. Offering One-Week Child Support Payment Amnesty Program” Jim Melwert, Apr. 28, 2014

Carrie S. Schultz, Esq. – author

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