Ingham County Friend Of The Court ingham county, friend of the court, child support, michigan Lansing Michigan

My fiancee and I have been living together off and on for over 6 years. We have 2 children together. In Michigan (since we were not married) a child support order was established. We have been trying to get the child support order stopped for some years especially since we first moved down here to Florida about a year ago. Friend of the Court was taking $200 every two weeks from my fiancee's check and we would have to wait sometimes up to 2 weeks for the money to be sent back to us.

Now a year later they sent us a letter last week stating that the court order for child support will be stopped starting December 31, 2007. (Yeah the letter was about 3 months late) The problem is that child support was taken from my fiancee's check every two weeks this year (2008) and even his tax money was taken for child support. We have received every payment this year except the tax money that was supposed to come back to us and the $220 that was taken from his check last week. Since I haven't gotten word from them as far as the payments that we have not recieved we decided to call them.

We were told that by stopping the child support payments that we have forfeited any payments that was taken to the state of Michigan. So this means that we will not recieve that $220 that was taken from his check last week or the $2500 that was taken from his taxes. All of this money will go to the state of Michigan for what they explained as "fees". They say that he owes $6500 in back medical support (Medicaid paid for the birth of our children) but in 06 when they took his taxes they said that his balance was 0. I haven't recieved any help from the state of Michigan since 06 so I do not understand where these charges are coming from and I can't get a straight answer from Friend of the Court as to where the charges came from. I don't even get help from the state of Florida so they can't try to charge us with anything either.


Also since we have stopped the payments they are now saying that he owes 300.00 a month now for arrears and fees. How ridiculous! So basically if I were to stay with child support and have them take the money out of his check (even though we live together) than I would recieve the money that is ours but since we live together and do not want to use child support as a middle man for our money they will continue to take $300 out his check just because. So if child support is so much "about the kids" how is this scenario proving it?

Basically I'm feeling as if I need to get back on child support so that we will have the money coming back to the house. As far as the money that we forfeited, I am very upset about that. We were relying on that tax money to move into our house. How can you just take our money. Yes we were on hard times we got help from the state of Michigan but we are on our feet now. We were not trying to abuse the system, we just needed help at the time. Also at the time Medicaid was our best bet to pay for the cost of the delivery of our children because of the expenses of healthcare but they said in 06 that the balance he owed was 0 and he has paid everything else in 07.

Now we don't know what to do and even though I have sent out letters to everyone at Friend of the Court I do not think that they will help me. The state of Michigan is really acting like a bully. Instaed of messing with us they need to be out catching the men who really need to pay child support. This is the reason why we left Michigan because of how their systems work.

Sorry if this report went all over the place but I have the flu and I am upset right now.

Mslogan81
Naples, Florida
U.S.A.