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well, I'm going the cheap route for now. The agencies I'm dealing with now aren't going to cost me anything. The bio mom is commiting a crime, in fact, I read yesterday that in MO a non-custodial parent who is deliquent of 12 aggregate monthly payments(in this case it's a LOT more than that) is a class D felony. So, basically what I'm doing is pressing charges on her, only I have the back-up of social services to prove my case. It won't cost me anything for the state to inflict their remedies because it's an issue of law enforcement.
my understanding at this point is that once I pass the court order onto MO cs enforcement services, they then have the resources to work with CA's cs enforcement services, and they put out the call to the DMV, IRS, etc. I doubt I'll ever have to see the inside of a courtroom.
now, if I were trying to establish a whole new court order, that's when it gets to be a big deal. then we're talking traveling back and forth to CA, we'd definitely have to have an attorney, and even if we could magically collect all the back support, we'd still be in the red after legal fees. not an option right now.
But I see your point, I'm not counting on money from her at all. yes, things are tight right now, but I'm finding other, more practical ways to get us through. I guess all this thinking I've been doing about how tight things are motivated me to get going on this because I can reasonably expect tough times in the future, and if I had some support from her(even though it's not much in the first place) that would really help out.
I'm not sure that she can be charged with the felony since she has never lived in Missouri. I doubt Missouri has jurisdiction over her. The original court order was from Kansas; not sure who moved away first, y'all or her, but with no legal efforts to have the case moved, I would think that at the very least that the countdown for felony could not start until that takes place, meaning that you are at less than 0 now. On the other hand, if Kansas or California have similar laws, I would expect that she would be subject to either or both of them from the date the order went into effect in Kansas, or the date she moved to California. I'm not an attorney, but I can see where pursuing criminal penalties could become very complicated. She can argue that she did not give you permission to take her daughter out of Kansas (unless, of course, she did), you can argue that she abandoned her child by moving out of state and not maintaining regular contact per the visitation schedule. This could get messy, and messy can be expensive.