My husband is in the Enlisted Researves and once a year has to serve his 2 weeks AT (annual training). This year was a 3 week AT and basically he wasn't getting his weekly pay during these 3 weeks. He got behind on child support only during these weeks with no pay and is working on getting the CP back pay. The AT pay took a while to get to his account so the CP threatened to have him reported to the DCSE to start collections. We are completely okay with this because now we won't have to work directly with the CP for child support pay and paying someone else would be much easier the diving to the bank 4 times a month to put a check in her account.

Q: What do we do during AT weeks when we don't get paid weekly? Can we call DCSE and explain? There isn't much we can do other then backpay once he has his full check which is normally receieved a few weeks after AT.

Also, how does this interest work? If we aren't able to pay on time then do we pay the CP interest on how long it take to back pay?

Lastly, We still owe her around $200. How is she allowed to report this number? What if she reports that we owe her more then we do? What do I go about getting this process taken care of?

-J

Well the first is that you should try to have a cushion for when he goes into training. But I understand living paycheck to paycheck. You can try informing DCSE but I suspect they will say the same thing. How interest is charged depends on local rules.

If you keep good records about what you pay, she can report anything she wants.

After I asked the question I was wondering if I could apply a little more to each week monthly to "prepay" for the months he has training?! Would DCSE allow that or is this something I'm going to have to take out and put back each year?

You would have to discuss it with them. I'm sure each agency has its own rules. But since they probably don't have sophisticated bookkeeping it might get lost. So it might be better for you to maintain a separate savings account that you can put something into each week to cover you for these periods.

How much is his weekly child support payments? Take that amount and ultiply it times 3 (for 3 weeks) or by the amount of time needed for payments to return to normal. You may find that you only have to put away an extra 20 or 30 dollars a week to make it through that stretch. You would put that money into an account and withdraw as needed to make the payments.