Beware of late child support payment for it could land you behind bars. A Houston father was jailed even though an error led to the delay in the payment.
By Martha Chan, Marketing Consultant to Family Lawyers and Divorce Professionals
Clifford Hall, a divorced father of an 11-year-old son is going to jail for 6 months because he was late with his child support payment due to clerical errors, even though he paid up in full and then some as soon as he found out about it.
Hall fell behind with his child support payment because the automated withdrawals from his paycheck were incorrect. The mother refused to settle for a late child support payment after Hall caught up with his paycheck. Apparently as of June 14, 2013, a person can be sentenced to jail for being late with child support payment. The maximum sentence is 6 months and that’s what Hall got. Plus the judge ruled Hall had to pay his ex-wife’s attorney fee — $11,000 before March of this year when he would still be in jail then. The amount of child support that Hall was late in paying was about $3,000. When he made the effort to catch up, he paid an extra $1,000.
Hall and his attorney Tyesha Elam shared his story on HuffPost Live before Hall turned himself in two days ago — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/child-support-error_n_4637465.html.
There is a petition online through www.change.org to stop this jail sentence. The petition has collected over 3,000 signatures — http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/rick-perry-governor-of-texas-remove-all-charges-against-clifford-hall-pertaining-to-his-over-paying-child-support-and-over-visiting-his-son.
As the co-owner of Divorce Marketing Group, Martha Chan focuses solely on marketing family lawyers and divorce professionals. She has been a marketer, speaker, and educator for 35+ years and provided her marketing expertise to many fortune 500 companies.
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