Q: I overpaid my child support. Now what?
My monthly income decreased by over a third due to a work injury forcing me to take a lesser paying job. I immediately filed with Domestic Relations to have my support order changed the day I started my new job in the middle of June. An agreement for the new support order was made at the end of September, lowering my payments. The order effective as of a week after starting my job in June and PASCES determined I overpaid my ex-wife by $671. An attorney friend told me that it was unlikely DRS would return any or all of the overpayment because my ex received it all already, so they wouldn’t make her pay it back. I was told the over-payment would be "put into an escrow" in case I ever fell behind in my payments which was fine with me. Yesterday, I received a check from DRS for $400. Why didn’t DRS just put it all into an escrow? Was the remaining $271 put into an escrow or will I be getting that back too? If DRS sent all of the money to my ex, where did the $400 I did receive come from?
A: Assuming that the original overpayment had been disbursed to your ex-wife when it was received, the computer record would show the overpayment of $671. The $400 was paid back to you at a time when you were paid in full for the current month and the computer recognized an excess still in the account in that month. In other words, the $400 actually came from your current payment. The computer was trying to even things out. No worries, though, the payment it came out of will have been recorded as a full payment. The remaining $271 may filter back to you in the next months or it may sit on the record as an overpayment. This actually all depends on when during any month your wage attachment payments hit the computer. If this doesn't make any sense to you, then contact your DRO caseworker for a better explanation.
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