I have been told that I do not need a child support court order in order to file for abandonment. He has not paid child support in over 6 months. Is this accurate?

What are the Child Abandonment Laws in GA? Are they related to Financial Abandonment?

Its not a good idea to piggyback your question on another thread. To avoid confusion I've merged your other posts into a new thread.

GA Laws are a bit different. Child abandonment is defined in GA as failure to support your child. So if a parent is not supporting their child, the custodial parent can, theoretically, go to the county prosecutor and file abandonment charges.

From a practical standpoint, the prosecutor may decline to prosecute if no support order was ever obtained.

Bottom line is you need to see how your local prosecutor wants to handle things.

Scott, would it make more sense to just try to get a child support order in place and ask that it be made retroactive? I would think that starting with child abandonment charges would start things out on the wrong foot. If the non-custodial parent refused to cooperate, they could be told that the other option is to file child abandonment charges, which might bring them to the table. What do you think?

Chuck is better able to answer this one. GA is different from almost every other state in this regard of criminalizing non support.

Personally, I agree that a better alternative is to get a court order because its transportable.

Thanks everyone for your answers...

While it is up to the local courts on how they view it, all the major ones around Atlanta will only prosecute if there is a child support order in place.

They view that child support is not owed till it is ordered.

So the courts will look
1. have they ever lived together
2. is the father listed on the birh certificate
3. if not on BC, has there been DNA to prove paternity
4 is there a child support order in place.
5.if not a child support order, has it been taken to child support enforcement