Q: My niece and her boyfriend of 7 yours ( never married) just split up. They have 2 children, 4 year old and 4 month old.
She and the 2 kids moved in with her grandmother. She went to DHR and filed for child support and when she did he told her he was going to take the kids from her and she would never see them again. She is afraid now to let them go visit him in fear of him not giving them back to her. He smokes weed and lives with his mother who is on all kind of drugs. He does work but so far has refused to pay any support ( this is why she went to dhr and filed for support). What does she need to do? Does she need to file for legal custody? Can she do that through DHR, she currently cant really afford a lawyer. Also she had sent him a text asking ( before he threatened to take the kids) him about getting them for a day or two so she could have a break and jokingly said she was ready to choke them, just an expression, and he is trying to use that against her to get the kids. Is that going to hold any weight with a judge? Or DHR if he goes that route?
A: Hello. Getting child support is a default award of custody in Alabama. She should be asking her case worker what all DHR will or will not help her with in terms of what to file for in this situation. If he files for custody, then she will need an attorney to handle the custody aspect of the case because all DHR will do at that point is calculate child support. Joking about harming children is not something anyone should do when they or someone else has invoked DHR into their lives. Thanks for your questions and best of luck.
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