I am formerly incarcerated and owe money for past, overdue child support payments (“arrears”). How can I change these arrears?

It depends on the date when your most recent child support order was issued by the judge AND for how long you were incarcerated.

POSSIBILITY #1: If your current child support order was issued on or after July 1, 2011 AND you were incarcerated for 90 days or more:

Your payments should have automatically stopped while you are incarcerated (see Appendix L, PG. 824, for more information about automatically stopping your child support payments while incarcerated). After you are released, if you discover that your child support payments were not automatically stopped—i.e., if you find that you owe child support from while you were incarcerated—you can ask the judge to “adjust” your child support arrears (i.e., reduce your debt to $0) for the time you were incarcerated.

To do this, fill out the Request for Judicial Determination of Support Arrearages or Adjustment of Arrearages Due to Incarceration or Involuntary Institutionalization (Form FL-676, available online at http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/fl676.pdf or in Appendix L, PG. 824), and file it with the family court where your child support order is from. You will need to prove: (1) the dates when you were incarcerated, and (2) that you could not afford to pay child support while you were incarcerated (i.e., that you had no income or other money during that time.) However, if you were incarcerated for a domestic violence or harassment offense, or for violating a previous child support order, OR if you had outside income or assets and could afford to make child support payments while you were incarcerated, the judge may refuse to reduce your debt.[2577] BUT remember—this ONLY applies if your child support order was on or after July 1, 2011 AND you are incarcerated for 90 days or more.

POSSIBILITY #2: If your current child support order was NOT issued on or after July 1, 2011, or you were incarcerated for less than 90 days:

Your payments do NOT stop during your incarceration, so you will continue to owe child support payments for this time (unless you asked the LCSA or judge to change your payments while incarcerated—see the next question for more information about how to do this). Unfortunately, the judge cannot go back and change your overdue payments in this case, but you can ask the LCSA or other parent to forgive some of your overdue payments (see next question), and you can ask the judge to change your current child support payments going forward.

  1. 2577

    Cal. Fam. Code § 4007.5.