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What should I Do If I Lose My Job or Am Fired From My Job? Can I Reduce My Child Support or My Spousal Support?

On Behalf of | Jan 28, 2019 | Legal Custody |

If you lose your job, the first thing you should do is to call your family law lawyer. Do not delay. Why? Because you may be able to file a motion with the court to reduce your support obligation. If you are successful in getting a court to reduce your support, your reduced support amount may be made retroactive to the date that you served the person receiving support with your motion. Therefore, you should file the motion as soon as possible so that you can have your reduced support payments made retroactive. Every day you wait to file the motion is one day more that you have to pay the current support amount.

Explain to your lawyer the circumstances of why you lost your job. If you lost your job through no fault of your own, you may be able to petition the court to reduce the amount of child support you must pay.

Whether you can reduce spousal support depends on a few things: if a court determined the amount of spousal support you should pay, then you can seek to modify the amount; if you are paying spousal support based on an agreement between you and the payee, then you must look at the terms of the signed agreement to determine if spousal support is modifiable and if so under what circumstances it is modifiable. Some agreements provide that spousal support is non-modifiable or modifiable only under certain circumstances. That is why you must keep handy a signed copy of your agreement.

Even though you have lost your job, you have to continue paying the same amount of support until a court orders you to pay less or you and the payee agree in a written signed document to a reduced amount. This is why you need to file a motion to reduce with the Court quickly and get it served on the other party as soon as possible.

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