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Give Me My Money: How To Ask For Reimbursement From Your Ex

By June 24, 2015July 21st, 2023Family Law

It’s after your divorce, the negotiations are over, the deal has been signed, and you are now officially “post-divorce.” And while your parenting plan says that you have to divide extracurricular and extraordinary expenses (with you each paying 50%, for example), how do you actually go about getting that money? It is not always as easy as sending an email saying “Please pay me $50 for baseball registration,” but once you have the right system in place, asking for money (and helping to enforce your order down the road if you need to) is not as hard as you might think.

If you have joint legal custody and you have both agreed that your child should play a sport, then one of you has to sign your child up for that sport and pay the registration fee. If you are the person paying, then shortly after you have made the payment (and within the time limit set on your parenting plan to provide a receipt if you have such a limit), you should scan the receipt for what you paid and send an email with the subject “Baseball registration 4/2015,” attach the receipt and say, “Please reimburse $25, your half of the registration fee attached. Thanks.” This system serves two purposes: 1) it allows your ex to see what you have paid and 2) if you later need to prove to the court in a motion for contempt that you asked for payment, you have the email (and attached receipt that you paid) as evidence.

It may seem like a laborious task to have to scan each receipt, but you have to ask yourself, “If my ex just told me how much he paid for something and asked me to pay half, would I necessarily just take his word for it.” If there is animosity between you, the answer is likely “No.” So giving proof of payment and having proof of your request for reimbursement allows a clear method for you to communicate with your ex what you are asking for; and it allows you to prove to the court what was not paid if you need to file a motion for contempt for failure to pay at a later date.

For these or other family law issues, you can contact one of the family law attorneys at Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal, P.C.

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