Question: Because she could not find work and found herself pregnant by a married man in his 40s, our 28 year-old daughter came home to live with us. Our daughter now works part-time at a convenience food store and is going to school to get her GED. She has no health insurance. She has called and written the father for financial help and, although he promises to pay the bills, all she has gotten is one $500 check. My wife and I are both retired and have made a commitment to care for our grandchild while our daughter finishes school, but we don't think it's reasonable that we foot the medical bills and provide all of the financial support. What are our rights, our daughter’s rights, and the rights of the unborn child?

Answer: Every state has laws that authorize its courts to establish and compel payment of child support and birth expenses for children within its borders, legitimate or not. Based on broad jurisdictional grants, state courts can order parents to provide for food, shelter, clothing, medical care and other necessities, both before and after birth.

Based upon the father’s refusal to provide little more than lip service, your daughter should seek good legal representation because fathers-to-be often try to raise defenses that will slow down the process. Your daughter needs financial help now.

Once set, the amount of support can be subsequently modified based on the child’s increased needs and the parents’ abilities to pay. Child support can be ordered to continue until the child turns 18, gets married, or becomes self-supporting. Should the child be born with, or develop, physical or mental disabilities, or if there are other exceptional circumstances, the court can require that support continue past age 18. In some instances, both parents can be made responsible for the child’s education after high school.

Question: My ex-wife and I settled our divorce case between us, without lawyers, by dividing up our assets and debts and agreeing on child support. Because my wife wasn’t working and would not complete her college degree until at least a year-and-a-half after we divorced, I agreed to pay double the guideline child support amount with the idea that as soon as my ex went to work, the child support would be reduced by 50 percent and would then be at the amount set by the guideline.

When my ex finished school and began working, I cut the child support by 50 percent as we had agreed. She told me that she was not making what she thought she would and needed more support. I refused, and she said she was going to a lawyer to sue me. Since our agreement was good before, why isn’t it good now?

Answer: Child support is required to meet your child’s needs -- not yours and not your ex-wife’s. The bottom line here is that you and she can’t bargain away your child's rights. But you will find plenty of other people also caught in the trap of using children to negotiate financial agreements. For example, some custodial parents will agree to waive child support or payments that are in arrearage if the non-custodial parent will give up visitation. The non-custodial parent gives up visitation and is later a defendant in a child support action because children’s rights cannot be negotiated away by their parents.

In your situation, because your ex-wife is now working, she is in a better financial position than she was when you made your agreement. While your support obligation might be reduced, it may not be halved, and it won’t be reduced automatically. Since you got into this mess by not using a lawyer and trusting your negotiations with your ex, you’d better get a lawyer this time. If you had hired one in the first place, you could have agreed to some type of time-limited alimony that would have been deductible to you and taxable to your wife, rather than trying to disguise support for her as child support.