Between housing, groceries, extracurricular fees, and childcare expenses, raising a child can be expensive. If you are a parent, you know this first-hand. Child support payments can help an unmarried or divorced parent cover child-related costs, however, getting the child support you need and deserve is not always easy. If you are not currently receiving any financial support from your child’s other parent, you should know that there are steps you can take to establish child support or enforce your current child support order. An experienced family law attorney can help.

Make Sure You Have an Official Child Support Order

In an ideal world, every parent would do his or her share to ensure that his or her child’s financial needs were met. In reality, many parents try to avoid child support. This is why it is important for every parent to obtain a formal child support order from the court. If you and your child’s other parent had a verbal agreement about how much money he or she would pay you each month, the state does not have any authority to recover the past-due payments from the other parent.

Two Ways to Enforce Payment of Child Support in Texas

If you have a court order requiring the other parent to pay child support, there are a few different ways that you can enforce that order. In Texas, The Office of the Attorney General houses a Child Support Division helps parents recover payments from a non-paying parent. The state has the authority to set up wage withholding, impose property liens, intercept tax refunds, suspend the parent’s driver’s license, and more.