v17 – What Can You Do if You Have A Child but Are Not Married?

If you go to the Department of Revenue for Child Support Enforcement, first off you may need to meet certain financial criteria. You may have to show that you’re indigent or be receiving benefits from the state of Florida. But if you do that, they will go ahead and they will argue for paternity and they will argue for child support. What they won’t argue is a parenting plan and this is an important note because a parenting plan can have a direct impact on the amount of child support. Meaning if you each have the child 50% of the time and you each make about the same amount of money, child support is going to be virtually minimal. But if one of you has the child 80% of the time and the other has the child 20% of the time, child support is going to be awarded to a much higher degree for the person who’s got the child most of the time. So that parenting plan can affect the child support. And if you go to the Department of Revenue for Child Support, they may get you child support but they’re not going to set forth the parenting plan and that can impact child support.

And I’m telling this because a lot of people are in this situation where they may not be married but they share a child in common with somebody else. And we deal with these issues all the time. If you have any questions, I’d be glad to talk with you, discuss your case, look at the situation. I deal with this stuff every day.

I’m Steve Kramer, thanks for watching the video.”