The lawyers and paralegals at Zoller|Biacsi receive child support questions from our clients and the general public daily. This blog addresses the lag time between the effective date of a support order and when the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services – Child Support Enforcement Agency – opens a case and begins to garnish child support from the parent who has been Ordered to pay support. This lag can be as short as 10 days and sometimes takes 6-8 weeks in our experience.

Conscientious parents want to pay their child support on time so that neither the child nor the other parent is stressed with or becomes angry about receiving child support.  Here’s how to do it:

Click on this link. For detailed instructions, including how to make on-line payments, go here.

Children need parents of good will.  A responsible parent will pay child support BEFORE the Child support agency makes contact and begins to collect through garnishment of wages.

HOWEVER, a responsible parent is put in a bind by the Laws of Ohio and the enforcement of child support orders. A parent ordered to pay support should NOT make payments directly, (unless there is a Court Order that addresses direct payments) to the other parent once an Order for child support has been issued.  Direct payments are legally considered GIFTS  -and the payment will not be credited to the official support ledger without a bunch of legal work and more expenses to “correct an arrearage”.

The Ohio Office of Child Support has an excellent website. We encourage our clients and callers to log on to the website and get to know the resources available there.  You will eventually have an account with the Office of Child Support. The more you learn from the website, and the better you become at using it, the less you will spend getting your answers from lawyers.

If you have more questions, however, please contact our firm.