Establishing Paternity

You know what he does for a living, how much he makes (which presumes you know where he works), but they can't serve the papers? Something doesn't seem right. Do you have a lawyer? If not, you need one.

You ask about establishing paternity and then mention being unable to serve him for child support. Is the reason you can't serve him becwuse he denies ppaternity? You can still serve him. He then goes to court and the court will order a dna test if his name isn't on the birth certificate. If he's named on the birth certificate he will have to prove he's not the father.

I suggest you need to consult an attorney.

Who are "they" who haven't been able to serve him and what have they been trying to serve? Has the court ordered child support but "they" haven't been able to find him? Or?

We need more information to answer this question.

If "they" is child support enforcement, get copies of the papers that need to be served from them and have him served yourself. If he's making that kind of money, it's not impossible to figure out where he works and hire your own process server to have him served there. They have no skin in the game so they'll drag their feet on doing anything, so just have it done yourself. Once he is served, he has X number of days to respond to the complaint and they can schedule the hearing and you can move forward with everything.

Typically once they get him into court (or set a date and he doesn't show up) they'll establish paternity and order child support via wage garnishment at that hearing. If he wants visitation, he has to either respond to the complaint and bring a lawyer to argue for that - which would get put off to another hearing - or he will need to file a complaint for visitation later.

In any case, if you're waiting for the child support office to serve him and you know where he lives or works, have that part done yourself.

The court has not been able to garnish his wages through his employer?
I'm assuming the court order would not have been possible without a paternity test so that should already be established.
Google him, check FaceBook, check LinkedIn - most people these days have an internet footprint.

If he's out of the country he might be out of any jurisdiction but if he's paid by a US company then the court should be able to garnish his wages to make child support payments.

who are 'they' and why haven't they been able to serve him? if you know where he is and how much he makes, this shouldn't be an issue.
khairete
S.

I think something is missing here. Why can't they serve him papers? If you know where he works, it shouldn't be that hard. Even if he travels. Find out when he is going to be "home" and make sure your process server knows. I assume you have an attorney?
You need to be communicating with them, and insist that THEY communicate with whomever they use for service of process. A private process server shouldn't have any problem if you know when he'll be in town and give them the info in a timely manner.
But... if papers don't get served, there comes a point when the Court will dismiss the action and you have to file more paperwork before they can be served. Is this the problem? You need to give enough notice (to your attorney/process server) that that doesn't happen. 3 business days should be enough if you have an attorney who is on top of things.

Oh.. and if you are going through state services, you need to realize that your case is one case among a STACK of them. It doesn't mean that the folks working it don't care, it just means that it is bureaucracy at work. And it's slow. And if your guy is popping in and out of town, and they finally get the paperwork out to the process server (along with 65 others) on the day before he leaves town, that process server's office isn't sending someone out that same day. They have to properly document everything and distribute all those 65 cases (plus yours) to various servers, and probably they have some sort of schedule they go by (addresses/maps) to sort out who is at the top of the list. It's luck of the draw whether they go at 9:00 on Monday morning, or 3:00 pm on Wednesday afternoon b/c he happened to be at the bottom of the stack and it took that long to get to the bottom of the stack. Maybe he was at work Monday and Tuesday and left town Tuesday night for work. Now, it will be returned "no service". They may try again a couple of times, but there will be a limit to how many times/how much time goes by before they will mark it unserved and return it to the attorney. If he is gone for 2 weeks at a stretch, that'd be enough to get no service.

You have to communicate with them (the child support agency) and make sure they understand the issue with his travel, so that THEY can communicate it to the attorney's office, and the attorney's office can relay the pertinent time sensitive info to the process server.

So you see, it isn't that they don't care... but there is a lengthy process involved that slows it all down. The right people have to have the right information about his whereabouts, at the right time.
It won't do you a lick of good to have them send papers to the process server today, if he left for work out of town yesterday, and won't be back for 3 more weeks. They probably won't hold onto the paperwork that long or wait to attempt service until he gets back.
But special attention CAN be paid to cases... Make sure that they understand the time sensitivity, and any alternate places that he might be served. Heck, they can even serve him at the local airport if you know when he is headed out on a flight. But not if they don't know in time to arrange it.

How do you know he makes $120,000 a year? How he lives his life? His work schedule?

If you know all of that, then you should have no issue with giving the proper channels the info so they can serve him, unless he is not the bio dad. Either way, a DNA test would be in order.

You should be able to use the child support enforcement agency even though your income in not "low".

I think they can do the lien on his income regardless of serving him with papers.

Normally they'd try to serve him then he'd have the chance to say Not Mine or Okay or I don't want to pay or what ever. Then there would be a DNA place he'd go to get swabbed, you'd take kiddos to a local place and you and the kids would get swabbed. This way the whole family is swabbed to prove their your kids and his kids on paper.

Then he'd have a court date that the state would be pursuing. He'd be in contempt of court if he didn't show up. But regardless he'd have a percentage of his income that would be taken from his income before he even gets paid.

You'd also get his income tax refunds for the foreseeable future to pay the back child support.

Since they can't serve him papers...well, this is what Oklahoma does. They have every address he's used, they have his name in work information right?, and they might also have any relatives addresses.

What we had to do to file for child support as grandparents who didn't know anything but the men's names...they had us run an ad in the local newspaper for a period of time. It stated specific information that the child support office said it had to have such as why they needed to contact the "Following Phone number" or come to the court house clerks office or what ever it was.

We ran these ads in the newspaper and several people told the dad's their name was in there and one followed through and one didn't.

When they didn't show up in court the judge ordered the child support regardless. Neither dad lived in this area anymore so they just chose to not contest child shupport but they did get swabbed to make sure.

By this point the state/judge had SS#'s, employers, etc...they based one dad's child support on minimum wage because he gets paid under the table on some work and has low income otherwise. SO his child support was $168 per month, the set minimum child support.

The other dad had a better income, not the best but better, so his was set at $248 per month.

For the next 6 years I got their IRS tax refund and they got none. UNLESS they were married and had a working spouse. That spouse could claim "Injured Spouse", this means part of the taxable income is theirs and taking their income tax refund on their earnings was an injury to them and should not be allowed. So the IRS holds those income tax refunds for 6 months to give that spouse chance to claim their part of the refund. If they don't then you get 100% of it, unless he owes other bills that have a lien against his refund. Then you could get just a portion.

But still, any of it would show up on your child support debit card sometime in the early fall. Our guys would sometimes file in January and we'd get their refund in July, August, but once the figured they weren't getting a refund they waited longer.

Getting child support doesn't take this long. Your attorney or agency isn't doing this right. They should be doing this like Oklahoma. Get on them and call them every week.

They have enough information on him if they have anything like an employer or SS# or address. They are just not working for you.

Contact your state's Child Support Enforcement office. If you have a court order for child support, there are law enforcement agencies that will see those orders enforced.

If he is making income, you can have a garnishment put on his employer, who will have to pay you. Also, you should be able to get a good server who would go to his work until they catch him there. It does not have to be police. Good luck!

Talk to your local state tax office. Many times they can be helpful in tracking down a dead beat parent. Also, try sending him a letter to his last known address and see if it comes back with a forwarding address. You could also hire a private investigator for a couple of hours to do some computer/database searches.

If you know where he works refiled the paperwork and use his work address instead of his home address.

In the between time, reduce your expenses and see what things you could do or sell to earn extra income. You may want to consider talking to a financial planner (usually initial consultations are free). It could really help you better manage what you already have coming in and give you some insight and thoughts you may not have considered.

Perhaps there is something the twins could help you with like baking cookies or perhaps have them set up a lemonade stand. It won't bring in life changing money but it will bring in something that may help.

I hope this helps.