BH says she canceled kids’ insurance
Has anyone experienced the birth parent canceling insurance for the children without warning? We are in California.
Background: in May, BM lost her bid to get spousal support and DH won his bid to lower child support. BM has a lot of unnecessary expenses (extravagant car) and track record of unwise spending (concert tickets, Starbucks, cigarettes) - much of which she overdrafted to spend - and her disposable income is actually higher than DH’s. Yet here we are, hearing from the kids that their mother is broke, and finally from her that she needs DH to pay half her medical premiums (which she’s been trying to get for ages until the child support services agency told her that it doesn’t count as DH’s 50% burden). She wrote a big, long letter about how broke she is and she doesn’t think she’s going to make rent and she hasn’t shopped for groceries in months, etc.
(Petty, but I’d like to know why she was letting her fiancé leach off of her, for instance the fact that she’s the primary borrower on his vehicle... and the rent he didn’t pay when he lived there... but whatever...)
Anyways, DH finally wrote her back and offered to buy groceries and help her out if she changes some things. He didn’t outline any specifics, but pointed out how she never affords us the flexibility she’s been told by the courts to offer (trading weekends around his demanding work schedule for instance) and to stop telling the kids that he doesn’t love them (YEP). Her response? She told us that she canceled their insurance.
We think she’s just trying to back him into paying for insurance. It is more than 5% of his gross monthly income. They had agreed prior that the kids would be on her insurance anyways because before it was no/low cost. It still is relatively less expensive for her that we can tell from her last court filing.
It isn’t that DH will not pay his kids’ insurance, because had she asked he would have. Now we are just concerned about how she did this. We have contacted our lawyer and now we wait.
Does anyone one have any experience with this? We don’t want to cave to her bullying but we do need to do what’s right for the kids. We can’t believe she would do that without considering the consequences. Is she bluffing? We may be asking for proof because it doesn’t seem beyond her. But if she’s not, and she really did just cancel without a backup plan, then I am just floored.
DH is pretty upset right now so we are shelving any conversations about this. I am hoping the lawyer has some good news for us.
Edit: sorry, I don't know how
Edit: sorry, I don't know how I screwed up that title and I can't find editing info (did that policy change)? I meant BM, not BH.
Is it court ordered that she
Is it court ordered that she provide insurance?
Usually insurance can only be canceled during open enrollment for the next year. If she did cancel, it should be active until that year end. Wait for the lawyer. She could be in real trouble, including being required to pay 100% of any medical expenses since she canceled the insurance.
I wouldn't do anything yet until you've heard from the lawyer. If it's court ordered for her to provide it then this is really her mistake and her consequence.
Are her finances really this bad? I think this is also an indication that she's not able to care for them properly... She hasn't shopped for groceries for months and she canceled their insurance (not, it was canceled for nonpayment but she did it on purpose?). Both aren't good parenting examples.
So originally DH was to pay
So originally DH was to pay the children's healthcare but they agreed to put themo n Medi-Cal at the time. Since then, there has been no different order in place for who pays for insurance, but her child support has been calculated to reflect the insurance premiums she pays.
The lawyer gave us options but didn't really talk about consequences for BM. I think our lawyer knows that contempt of court is rarely enforced. We have asked BM if DCSS is aware of this. The options included drawing up a compromise with her and sending it to the courts, but DH is tired of being bullied so he made the point that BM's child support includes her paying those premiums and the lawyer mentioned that the $50 premium increase she experienced would only alter the child support by $5. She would lose something like $200 per month if we put the kids on our insurance, and we would be saddled witharound $300 extra per month less the gains in child support.
So her finances raelly are that bad, but at the same time they aren't. Ia gree that it is an indication that she isn't able to properly care for them. She has overdrafted thousands of dollars over the last few years, including for concert tickets, digital subscriptions, Starbucks, etc. - all nonessentials. She hedged her bets on getting extra monehy from DH but she lost and now she can't weasel her way out of an expensive new car and continual debt.
And yes, she purposely canceled the insurance. It comes out of her paycheck.
If she was court ordered to
If she was court ordered to pay for insurance she can't just cancel it. She would have to provide some kind of marketplace policy for them. If it was not in the court order, you need to quickly get them enrolled. You ususally only have 14 days to make a "change in circumstance" policy change. This could get complicated with the new health insurance laws very quickly. I do HR and I promise it isn't something that can be messed around with and handled later.
If you have their insurance cards or have the contact info you might want to call them and find out if they are still insured or not.
Is that 14 days still
Is that 14 days still relevant under open enrollment? We think she thought this would be OK because of open enrollment.
Open enrollment is different,
Open enrollment is different, however with minor's you HAVE to put down the new insurance policy information.
You can't just cancel
You can't just cancel insurance without proof that the people you are covering have other coverage. Even during open enrollment you need to show that they have other coverage (at least in my state - that may vary).
Is it in the CO that she has to cover insurance?
Not sure if you saw my reply
Not sure if you saw my reply but we're in a sticky situation regarding that; the original order states that it's DH's, but they agreed to put the kids on Medi-Cal to avoid his 5%+ burden. Now the child support has been calculated factoring in her premium payments. I can't imagine a judge trying to enforce the initial order after the child support order has been made reflecting her cost for premiums. Or maybe I'm wrong?
If your partner would like
If your partner would like primary custody then a court would really love that letter where she’s admitting to neglect. No food in the household and possible homelessness are reasons why custody could be changed.
As for who carries insurance, look at your order. Many say that both parents are to carry it or say who and what conditions.
SO’s said that he was supposed to carry it but since it was unreasonable BM would carry it through her work and SO was to cover half of the cost for the children. Not half of the full cost. So if the cost for her alone was 50 and adding the kids made it 90, he had to pay 20 of that and yes that 20 was taken out of the calculation for child support. If SO carried insurance then it reduced his take home which in turn reduced his child support.
Thankfully now the children are on state insurance because SO still can’t provide it through his work and BM doesn’t make much so they qualify for it.
SO’s order also says that if there is medical related cost that could have been avoided by use of insurance the parent at fault must pay all cost. For example if SO takes them to a place out of network but it is showing that he could have taken them in network he is responsible for that cost.
This is probably what should
This is probably what should've happened. thanks for the info. I think the kids should be on a CHIP or ACA program if she refuses to put them on her own insurance at work.
Yep
My SS’s BM was court ordered to provide health insurance because it was too expensive where DH worked to get it. She was paid extra each month in CS To compensate for her carrying the insurance. We later found out she canceled the insurance because it increased $10 a pay. Two of the SSs are very active in sports. And you guessed it, the oldest got injured and needed surgery. She somehow managed to lie to the hospital and get the bill reduced to nearly nothing.
Shortly after that she tried to take DH back to court for more CS. The judge unloaded on her for cancelling the insurance. His CS decreased by 1/3. She has since married and has the SSs under the Spouses insurance. I think she only got married for the insurance and because her spouse bought a house and she couldn’t be on the loan due to her credit. BM has been married tnree years and still hasn’t changed her last name to her married name.....
Not sure about insurance requirement
We are in kind of a weird spot about the insurance requirement. I think he was initially subject to covering the kids, but when they found out the cost was *very* high compared to hers (I think she was able to put them on Medi-Cal and his was over $500/month), they were on Medi-Cal under her. She put them on new insurance after a while, also without consulting DH. It’s only a problem now because of her financial issues and I believe she asked him once about it but he told her it’s an unreasonable cost (over 5%) and he won’t have to.
Thank you for all these comments. This helps. Still waiting on the lawyer but i guess we will see. I agree that this is an example of very poor parenting. We do want the kids at least 50/50, but the logistics on that is a nightmare right now.
My SS's SpermIdiot was
My SS's SpermIdiot was ordered in the CO to provide insurance when SS was 2yo. He never did. For 9 years we covered SS under my employer provided policy. His CS was increased to pay for half of the increase in my premiums in order to cover SS. We confronted the Judge on that crap regarding why is it that the SpermIdiot NCP was required to provide insurance for the Skid and yet was only required to pay for half of the insurance costs for me to cover him. The Judge ignored my question.
9 years after that ruling my DW filed for an ammendment of CS. It took a year to get the SpermIdiot to court for that. A few months after that hearing the SpermIdiot petitioned the DA's office to have his CW reduced since he now had insurance for SS. The Admin Law Judge rejected that petition because he had never provided insurance as ordered and the insurance he finally obtained was crap. So Spermidiot remained on the hook for half of the insurance premiums for me to cover him for the last 7 years of the CO.
ToxicTroll just lost her job
And her awesome insurance. Oh well, so now we have to look around at insurance, although she claims that she is going to some kind of "insurance for people who are losing their insurance". Ive heard of something like that, but its only temporary. We are also in California where medical costs are astronomical. And insurance is ridiculously high. This would put us under quite a bit.
I thought BH meant Bio Ho! LOL.
Canceling insurance is not a
Canceling insurance is not a qualifying event to move to another insurance. I am not even sure you can get insurance through the ACA with that bullshit excuse. BH just canceling her insurance and coverage for the Skids just doesn't pass the smell test. She is obviously playing games.
The BM in your case losing her job is a qualifying event. I suggest that you look into ACA coverage.
My bride and I went on ACA insurance Q4 of 17 and Q1 of 18 when my Expat assignment was eliminated when my customer postponed the start of the project. Though I do not agree with the ACA economically for our country it was a great program for us to get immediate coverage at far lower cost than COBRA. If she also lost her job then she can get a huge discount on an ACA market place policy.
Since our only income was my unemployment our ACA discounted monthly premiums were $385. They only look at income they do not look at assets. The discount was $1200 for the high coverage low deductable policy we chose.
Try the ACA market place. You may find something that works for you.
now we wait on BM's response
With some guidance from our lawyer, these are the options:
Rags is right, BM is just playing games. She's read our message calling her out on this as DH is tired of appeasing her. She really can't afford to get child support recalculated as it was already calculated to her advantage (the judge used a lower figure for our custody time and a higher figure for his salary), so she'll be looking at losing around $800 per month from the start of this legal mess when she decided she wasn't getting enough from him. DH drove home the point that her choice to bring on a lot of debt was hers, not his, and he's not responsible for it. We'll see what cockamamie horseshit she comes up with now that we've stood up for ourselves.
(edited for punctuation)