You Can Be Placed in Jail for Failure to Pay
Video Transcribed: When does not paying your child support go from a problem to a major problem? Hi, my name is Ryan Cannonie and I’m an attorney in Tahlequah, and what a lot of people don’t know is that yes, there are child support orders.
You can be placed in jail on them for failure to pay. A lot of times, they’re handled. You have DHS there, you might have different types of attorneys than you would normally see in a criminal context, and child support is its own thing.
But if you don’t pay your child support, you have more than just a couple of days in jail to worry about. If you don’t pay your child support and it goes for a year without being paid, or if it’s over $5,000, then you can be looking at a felony conviction with four years DOC time and a $5,000 fine.
And it’s not just if you don’t pay your child support, this also includes any medical obligations in the child support order, any shelter, food, care, anything you’re not doing, you can actually be charged with this as a felony offense.
It actually also has a misdemeanor offense to it. So if it’s not over $5,000 or if it hasn’t been a full year, then it’s a misdemeanor, but child support adds up pretty fast. So that $5,000 amount is well, decently quick to get.
So if you find yourself in this situation, if you’ve got a child support issue where you’re looking at criminal charges, then give us a call. We’d be happy to help you in your criminal defense on this.
Defending a criminal action for what’s called omitting to provide for a child is very different than dealing with a child support case because you’re dealing with a prosecutor who may or may not be interested in whether or not you have the money to pay right then.
They may be interested in getting you a felony conviction and a felony conviction on this is going to follow you for years, possibly the rest of your life, depending on the rest of your criminal history. So this isn’t a small thing, as I said. Sometimes it goes from being a problem to a major problem. If you need help with child support in Tahlequah, give us a call.
