Q: Ex is trying to get me to pay child care costs and medical expenses for daughter going back to 2007.

A: It depends on your court order of support or divorce decree. If you were required to pay these expenses, you were entitled to timely receive invoices and required to pay your share in a timely manner. If your ex waited 14 plus years to even give you receipts or invoices then you may have an argument. Contact an attorney to discuss your specifics.

A: This is not a better answer than that of my colleague. It only approaches its response in a slightly different way.

Some vestiges of the common law exist in child support cases. One of these is that stale evidence is unreliable evidence. This means child support add-ons that are not prosecuted timely will be precluded, and the mother will be unable to collect for 2007 expenses. There is a great likelihood that the average support magistrate will preclude every year except the last one year.

This is very different from "basic" support which has a 20 year statute of limitations for orders entered on or after 1986 when the statute of limitations was six years. Reagan as governor was sick and tired of welfare payments to mothers, so he assumed men were the culprits and he signed into law sweeping child support changes as president, and New York followed suit to get its dollop of matching funds for support enforcement by increasing the number of fathers requiring enforcement.

However, one must review the order of support to determine whether it compels the payment of old expenses. Ordinarily, orders of support contain no such provision, but no two orders are ever the same. The asker should retain counsel to defend against the mother's claims no matter what the order says.