Hi, Tim Blankenship here at divorce661.com and in this video we’re talking about the Income Withholding Order, also known as the FL 195. The FL 195 essentially is a form that you can fill out to have child support automatically taken out of the payor’s check when paying support.
So if you’re the one paying support, you can file this with the court, either party can file it, and you can get the judge to sign off on it and essentially you then serve it on the employer. Then the employer will pay direct the child support, and/or spouse support but we don’t recommend it for the spouse support.
The issue that we’re having, what I want to discuss specifically in this video, is we are starting to see some courts make it mandatory that, when there is an order for child support, they are making it mandatory that an FL 195 also be filed. Now, there isn’t anything that says this has to be done, but we are seeing one particular court, and I just did a video about this court, which is the Pomona Courthouse.
We are seeing where they are now rejecting judgments where there is child support and they are requiring that an FL 195 Income Withholding Order be filed, as well. That’s causing some concern for our clients. This is new. We never file the FL 195, and most of our cases that have children have child support built in and we just have it paid directly to the spouse receiving.
Now we have a court requiring the FL 195 and they’re rejecting the judgment in its entirety, meaning they won’t even accept it, without the FL 195 being attached. So, that said, we are having to file it. Otherwise, of course, we can’t file the judgment and when we notify our clients that we’re seeing this trend, they of course become concerned because they didn’t want that to happen. They didn’t want to have an Income Withholding Order for various reasons.
They didn’t want their employer to know, maybe they work for a small employer and they don’t want them to know that they’re having to pay child support, or maybe even that they got divorced. So, here’s the work around. We’re filing the 195 when mandatory by the court and then what we’re telling our clients is, just don’t send it to your employer.
So you have a court order for Income Withholding Order, the only way that’s going to happen and come out of your check is if you send it to your employer once it’s filed. So, the court isn’t going to do that. When they file it, they’re not mailing it to the employer. If that changes, I’ll let you know, but as of this recording they are not sending these out nor have they ever.
You file the Income Withholding Order, they mail it back to you and it’s up to the person who filed it to send it to the employer to collect the child support. So the work around on the FL 195 if you find it’s being required in a court you’re filing in. Go ahead and file it, and then just don’t send it to your employer. Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Hope you’re having a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.
