Child Custody: Multiple Baby Mamas
Some men have children with different baby mamas. Let’s give an example of baby mama one and baby mama two. So baby mama one walks into court and says, “Daddy earns $3,000 a month. I want child support.” And let’s say that the Judge says, “Okay, I agree with you. I’m gonna have you pay $800 a month for child support.” Then six months later, baby mama number two walks into court and says, “I have a baby with this guy. His income is $3,000 a month and I want child support.” And that judge runs the numbers but does not know anything about baby mama number one and the other baby, and makes a child support order based on his income and says, “Dad, you owe this mama, baby mama number two, $800 a month in child support.”
Now let’s say that based on his income, the maximum amount of child support for one child should be $800 a month. The problem is this judge doesn’t know about the other child. Neither judge knows anything about the other child. This could happen if you have one mother living in Los Angeles County and the other living in Orange County or another county. We once had a case where our client had baby mamas in LA, in Orange County and in Riverside County. He had three babies with three different women living in three different counties, and none of the counties knew about the other baby. So our client walks into our office and says, “I’m getting killed on child support. I literally don’t have any more money for my own bills.” We asked him, “Does Riverside know that you have a child in LA and pay child support for that child?” And he says, “no.” We had to fix that. So when we filed the case in Orange County, we also filed another case in Riverside County to modify child support. And when we went back into court in both Orange County and Riverside County, we made sure that those judges knew everything about all the children in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Riverside County. When we did that, of course he got a much lower order for each child based on the fact that he was paying child support for three different children. We also later had to go back in and get the order changed in Los Angeles because that one was still based on the maximum amount. Fathers navigating child support issues may benefit from consulting a child custody lawyer.
So that’s how it works. Each judge, if you let them know that there is a child support order in a different county, then yes each child will only get their appropriate share of the total amount of child support that the father should be paying.
Here is a perfect example: just like the above case where both children were supposed to receive a child support order for $800 per month, if you go back into court in both courtrooms and say, I have another child that I’m paying child support on, the appropriate amount of child support might have only been about a thousand or $1,200 a month, instead of being 1600 total, and each child would only be receiving about five or $600 a month instead of $800 each. So that’s how it works and it is a benefit that unless you hire an attorney that knows what they’re doing you might get stuck paying a massive amount of child support that you do not have to pay.
