5 Things To Know About Child Support Garnishments

  1. Child support garnishments can be sent to an employer to attach wages. For wage attachment, Child support garnishments go to the front of the line above all other garnishments except IRS liens.
  2. Wages can be garnished up to 65% of “disposable income.” That’s after-tax income. So the employer first reduces wages by taxes and then by child support.
  3. An employer can deduct an additional $5 per paycheck as an administrative fee. This does not reduce child support but further reduces the employees pay.
  4. Child support garnishments can be taken from Workers’ Compensation benefits and can garnish workers’ compensation settlements.
  5. A private attorney can pursue past due child support on a percentage fee basis.

Paying Child Support When You’re Not the Father

Below, you will find three unusual ways to pay child support in Colorado even though you’re not the biological father. Paternity can be established without a genetic test proving who the biological father, here’s how paternity can be established by law in Colorado.

1. You Told the World You Were the Father

This sounds strange, but the reality is you could become the legal father if you held yourself out as the father. The law states you become the legal father if a man “receives the child into his home and openly holds the child out as his own natural child.” This is a father by “conduct and words.”

2. You Made An “Attempt” to Marry the Mother Before the Child Was Born and the Child Was Born Within 300 Days of the Ending of Cohabitation.

The law is not so clear on what an “attempted marriage” is and how you need to fumble the ball, but an attempt could be good enough. You must have lived with the mother, attempted to marry the mother and have the child born within 300 days of moving out.  The idea is that just because some technicality, or tornado or other crazy event kept the marriage from being formalized should not stop the law from “presuming” who the father is.

3. You’re Married

Even if you’re not the biological father, the law presumes you are the father if the child was born while you were married to the mother. Yes, the law presumes faithfulness and biology.

Get in Touch With a Professional Denver Paternity Lawyer

Let our team of established paternity lawyers in Denver help you with paternity, child support, and any other family law cases today! These kinds of things can be confusing and stressful, we’ll help you along the way.