Hi. I'm a mommy with a 9 month old and a 19 month old stepson who is very much a part of our lives and we love him to death. I'm married to his dad, and we own our own house, both have decent jobs where we only have to put my daughter in daycare one day a week with the way our schedules work (my husband works 3 twelves and one day every other weekend, and I have two week days off and saturdays.
Currently my husband only has joint legal custody of his son where she has primary physical custody and we pay he child support biweekly. Fortunately for us, she likes to dump her son off on us whenever she can, so we've had him more than equal time over the past year, however it's really been affecting our budget as we're just getting back on our feet (I just started work about a month or so ago). Now we just got a notice in the mail stating that the part of a medical bill that his mother was suppsoed to pay is in collections and will ruin my husbands credit if it's not paid within 14 days. She's refusing to pay it even though the amount was from back before they even went to court for visitation and child support and we had already paid half the bill, even though she was responsible for the whole amount. We're in the process of filing an emergency court hearing to put a restraining order on the couple she's been staying with because they got into a fight and shattered glass all over him. My question is what should we do about the deliquency bill? We can't afford to pay it on top of the child support right now, and we can't afford for my husbands credit to be hurt any more, he's trying to build it back up.
We really want to fight for full custody because we feel my stepson is not in a stable environment living with his mother, because she's staying with her aunts boyfriend and his daughter, she doesn't have a job and she has no license or transportation. Any advice?

What does the custody order say and do you have proof you paid 1/2 the bill already ?

Yes it would be easy enough to get a recipt of the whole amount from the dr office. We had the bill, I'm sure they can give us another copy.

Right now because he has joint legal and no physical, he only gets every other weekend visitation, however, she constantly asks us to take him more. Like she wanted to do a one day a week too so we'd get him Wed-Monday, so almost a week by week so she wouldn't have to spent all that much money on him when she had him. Of course, she won't admit to that. We've gone to court before the first time we had a lawyer and he was a total idiot made it look worse for us didn't know what he was doing, so then we took it to the higher court and we couldn't do anything about it because his mom wasn't there as a witness like we'd planned. Now we basically have to wait until something changes before we can go back to court, and we're hoping that the emergency court hearing will be that open door for us, and if so we will have a better lawyer and hope to get full custody so he will be in a more stable environment because she's been dragging him aroun dto all these differen places, staying with her aunt, staying with her gma, staying with her boyfriend (now ex) staying with two other friends... it's just not fair to him to be put through that.

Would it be the wrong thing to take the amount out of the check as we've warned her if she doesn't pay the amount by then? I mean this is going to affect my husbands credit which will hurt us even more financially when it comes to refinancing or whatever.

First off you need to make sure you write down every time he stays overnight. That way you set a track record. Then go for more custody. He actually has physical custody at this time but its of low percentage. If you can raise it to 50% then that's a good start to gaining full custody. After that you can apply for a modification of child support. It should dramatically lower. That way you get extra help that you need for food etc.
Personally I wouldn't just try for a total flip. ( full custody ). If she is willing to give you more take it. That way you have a proven track record.

If your child support is court ordered then yes it would be wrong for you to modify it without the courts consent. You could ask the judge at the hearing but try to remember child support is for the child so what your asking to do is take food from their mouth. Be very careful with how that's presented.

Thanks. Yeah, we decided that if she doesn't pay the amount by Thursday when we're due to give her cs, that we're going to take her to court for the medical bill. So we'll still give her the cs, she can't take us to court, but we'll take her to court for that amount, and while we're at it, try to get joint if not full custody in the process. We keep a record of everything we do with my stepson and every time we have him. It's on this calendar, we write down when we get him and what we do that day and the days that we have him. The only problem I see is if she turns that around and lies saying we didn't have himthat much... then I don't know what they do, but I take pictures pretty much everyday, so if need be, they can take my computer to court and see the date the pictures were taken.

At this point I'm just waiting on my husband, because he has to be the one to file the court hearing.