The mother of my 15 year old daughter has decided to let my daughter move out of state to live with her Aunt. I am OK with this change, however, I want to make sure that child support gets sent to the Aunt. Her mother is not intending to file anything with the court and claims that she will just forward the money on to the Aunt. Yeah, right!! I don't have the money for an attorney and just want to make sure the money goes to the right place.

First, do you have visitation rights? If this move will affect those you may be able to prevent it. You could petition the court for custody yourself.

If you are allowing the move, you can also petition the court to modify the custody order to invest custody in the aunt so that support (which I assume is collected by an agency) can go to the aunt directly.

Thanks for your response Scott. I do have visitation rights and don't necessarily want to prevent my daughter from moving, as she will come back during breaks for visits. However, I just want to make sure the child support I pay goes to the Aunt and NOT the mom who isn't doing ANYTHING for my daughter. I don't know what kind of Petition I can file. We live in Illinois. Yes, the child support now goes through the agency. I am just not sure how to go about getting the recipient changed... and I'm concerned that this Aunt is being given some sort of guardianship by the courts through my daughter's mother. Shouldn't that be a necessity?

Sorry, meant to say that I'm concerned that the Aunt Isn't being granted guardianship... I would think she would have to have some legal responsibility for my daughter.

The first thing is to contact the agency that is collecting the support. They should be able to tell you how to file a modification. And yes, the aunt needs to be legally recognized as responsible for your daughter. Depending on local laws, that may be accomplished with a simple Power of Attorney. Or it could require a court ordered temporary guardianship.

Again, contacting the court that issued the support order is where you can start.