More than a thousand Virginia families are close to receiving their share of a million dollar settlement. The lawsuit, brought by the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE), is a result of improper actions taken by the Texas-based company Supportkids Inc. in collecting child support payments.
As reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other news outlets:
The lawsuit, filed in 2008, claimed Supportkids illegally used misleading “withholding orders” that appeared to be government-issued to get child support payments withheld from noncustodial parents’ paychecks. The company allegedly extracted fees often exceeding 35 percent.
“They were getting the custodial parent to assign child support payments to the company, and that’s not legal or enforceable in Virginia,” [Thomas M. Wolf, a private attorney who represented Virginia in the case against Supportkids] said. “Child support belongs to the child, not the custodial parent, so the custodial parent can’t assign it to someone else.”
The settlement will provide victims with 55% of the funds siphoned from their child support checks, and the amounts recovered range from a dollar to over twelve thousand dollars.
Timely payment of child support can be a major issue for many custodial parents. When parents are not paying, child support can be obtained directly from a parent’s employer or bank account via a court order, cutting the parent out of the loop entirely. The family law attorneys at Livesay & Myers, P.C. have extensive experience with child support cases, and can help you recover unpaid child support and if necessary obtain a court order that child support be withheld from the paying parent’s paycheck. Contact us to schedule a consultation today.