Should I hire a private investigator? Dealing with child support

oh I see complaining - he makes good money and has to pay a lot of child support

tough

That came to my mind also that he could end his child support payments by talking his child into supporting him having full custody, as at 15 he or she is old enough to have her/his wishes carry great weight with the courts.

The most you should do is report your suspicions and any credible information/documentation you have collected to the appropriate authorities (in this case, they would likely be the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration) for them to investigate. If you want the report to be taken more seriously, I definitely would suggest you not even mention child support payments in your report.

Before you so, you might want to consider the likely negative effect on your child if your ex goes to jail or if her disability benefits are terminated and she is required to pay back the benefits as well as back taxes and penalties. Getting your ex in legal and financial trouble may give you some satisfaction but it is likely to disrupt your child's life.

You should not hire an investigator to do the job of IRS and SSA investigators. It's a waste of resources as even if the private investigator finds evidence of tax evasion and/or Social Security benefits fraud, the proper authorities would still have to conduct their own investigation at an additional cost to the taxpayers (which presumably includes you). In any case, getting your ex in trouble for tax evasion or benefits fraud will not necessarily result in your child support payments being reduced. It's also very unlikely that you could, as some have suggested, use any evidence that might be found to successfully blackmail/extort her into getting the child support payments reduced. A court would have to approve a modification to the child support order and that's not going to happen without evidence of a change in circumstances that warrants a modification. In this case, it seems probable that getting your ex in trouble for tax evasion or benefits fraud will likely result in her income being significantly reduced and that could easily result in your child support payments being increased rather than reduced. But if you want to pursue this further, you should get professional legal advice.

More info:
Modifying Child Support | The Maryland People's Law Library

Well if she would get locked up and or in serous trouble with the law then his child support should end by him gaining custody of the child/teen.

Unless he had have nothing to do with the child other then paying child support for 15 years or had been found a totally unfit parent by the courts for other reasons there off hand seems little likelihood he could not gain custody under those conditions.

Now the question is whether he would be willing to assume custody as that seems to be the only route that would likely grant him released from paying child support to his ex.

If it had been my child I would had been fighting for at least share custody from the beginning but we are not all the same so perhaps he would prefer to keep paying child support then assuming the burden of parenthood.

You are right in the comment about seeing a lawyer.

Jane you should not assume things in life... I have another child that I raised as a single parent so I know exactly how much it cost to raise a child. And the reason I don't want to pay my ex is because she hangs in bars and drinks the money away. I get my son regular and spend money on him all the time. I just spent $325 on his driving classes because I wanted to help him... The less I pay her the more I have to help him

Okay thank you ragman for your advice I will do that :-)

Jane you should not assume and if u ask me I will be totally honest EST with you. Just so you know a little about me I have another son that I have raised all on my own Andover he is from another woman. So I know how much it takes to raise a child. The boy I pay a ridiculous amount of child support on I just paid $325 for his driving classes because his mother drinks up child support money in bars. So the way I see it the less I pay her the more I can spend on my son and not alcohol and tip jars.

Yes she usually ask for a Increase at least twice a year, she also gets a ssi check. She apparently is playing the system and wants all the easy money she can get

Yes I agree but as he has stated she gives him no money at all.

Yes the reasons she is a ex is because I found out after dating her for several months is that she is a drug user and I'm not going to live or deal with that. Our child support is based on both incomes and she lies and says she is not capable of working.

I'm quietly listening, but I'll pipe in to say that I have experienced something similar in my extended family, the mother sending the child to friends' places while she used the support money for coke and heroin at different times. I found that part out late in the scenario. She got custody in the first place because of a ruse, which, years later she apologized to me for (I talked with her at length several times before she died).

Anyway, from how I am reading what you are saying, I think:
1) see an attorney who is conversant with this kind of situation (that is vital, believe me); my family member dealing with all this used his divorce attorney, in that case a poor choice.
2) and, with the attorney, consider an investigator.

But you are ok with your child living and dealing with that?

FWIW, it seems mighty clear (to me at least) that he's not ok with it. Why assume that he is accepting of it? Read the thread.

As far as I can see this is the first mention that he has made about her drug use.

If I was in his situation I would be more concerned about getting my child out of there than worrying about how much child support I was paying.

The point I was making was that he couldn't and wouldn't live like that, but he was happy to leave his child with this woman.

It has been more about payments than custody, hasn't it.

Yes, it has.

I think people get fixated on the mother being with the child, and can be completely plotzed by the way things are turning out. I'll agree that this seems a fairly distant payments issue to the father, so

wake up time, dad.

Edit - that may have been mean, maybe there is caring past the payment concern.

In some jurisdictions, that negotiation
was deemed larceny by extortion a/k/a blackmail
with nasty criminal (and ethical) counter-accusations. (Is "ethical PI" oxymoronic ?)

Gee whiz, the PI was ethical on Perry Mason show.

Paul Drake