Ex Avoiding Child Support? We Can Help Track Down Those Hidden Assets!
Your ex might be avoiding child support and hiding assets – so how do you get your child support payments? Divorce Hub are going to be your child support advocacy detectives! Child support is for the benefit of your child. They deserve to receive proper care and financial support. Here is your guide to underpayments of child support.
What are the ways people minimise their income and hide their assets?
The Department of Human Services, known as Services Australia, governs child support through the Child Support Agency (CSA). Both the paying parent and receiving parent need to notify Services Australia about a change in circumstances. This includes changes to contact details, care arrangements and income.
Sometimes payments can be minimised if your ex is not notifying of any changes that may affect your payments.
There are also a lot of tips or loopholes on websites offering ways for parents to minimise their income, hide their assets and otherwise reduce their obligations to pay child support. These include
- Becoming self-employed and avoid declaring some income
- Putting money in trusts
- Spending more time with the children
- Avoiding increase in pay, deferring salary or bonuses or refusing overtime at their job
- Having other children
- Keeping large amounts of cash
- Declaring bankruptcy
- Investing money into a business
This isn’t fair to your child, and there are consequences to avoiding child support.
What happens if your ex is discovered to be deliberately underpaying child support?
There are a variety of ways Services Australia can recover child support. Sometimes this means making adjustments for payment instalments if your ex is struggling to pay. They may also allow employer or bank account deductions, tax refund deductions and overseas travel bans. If nothing works, they can take your ex to court. If there is criminal activity, there may be prosecution for serious avoidance.
If your ex does not properly arrange how they can pay their overdue child support before going overseas, they may be barred from travelling. You can find more information about the consequences in our article about travel bans for those with child support debts.
Services Australia won’t let debts slide if you notify them you are not being paid.
Who can investigate this?
Services Australia can investigate unpaid child support. You need to notify Services Australia with your suspicions to prompt an investigation. Here are some examples where you may believe your ex is hiding assets. If your ex:
- is living a lavish lifestyle but underpaying child support
- is planning to be travelling overseas soon
- seems to be earning from an undisclosed income
- has a drop in salary
- is involved in a company or trust
Services Australia may investigate:
- the cash economy
- income not from wages. For example, companies or trusts that hide taxable income
- legitimate reductions in taxable income and fringe benefits
- using optical surveillance if needed
Investigations may result in the payment of the overdue debts or a reassessment of income to correct child support payments.
Paired with a forensic accountant, your lawyers at Divorce Hub can also help investigate.
What about a child support Change of Assessment?
A Change of Assessment (COA) is when a government officer manually changes child support payments. This can be used when you feel the assessment is unfair because the income assessment does not properly reflect how much your ex may be earning (or could be earning) and their resources.
The process is as follows:
- Apply for the COA using the correct form. You must provide a reason for the change.
- Respond to the application using the response form (not compulsory but advisable).
- Discuss with the decision maker, and Services Australia may do further investigation.
- Services Australia will then consider evidence of the parties and decide on the matter.
The more information and evidence you have, the better. We can help with this process and finding evidence.
For more information, visit our Child Support FAQ.
How can Divorce Hub help uncover hidden assets and sort out any issues?
At Divorce Hub, we are the lawyers that help with your entire divorce and family law processes. We don’t stand for your financial abuse. We can work with forensic accountants to advise whether you should pursue uncovering hidden assets and then help find where your ex may be hiding money.
We can also help you with an application for a Change of Assessment to investigate your ex’s finances. We can advise and assist you in this process.
We can help communicate and negotiate with your ex’s lawyer to create a Binding Child Support Agreement. This will be a binding legal document where you will be protected by contract.
There are a lot of options and investigations that can be made to receive your full child support payments. So, leave it to us. Divorce Hub is here to be your child support advocate. We’ll help you find those hidden assets as your hands-on legal detectives.
For more information, visit our Child Support FAQ. To get started with sorting out your child support troubles, contact Divorce Hub today.