I have seen your question.
My name is David Salvaggio. I have more than 35 years of legal experience and head a law firm that devotes its practice exclusively to New Jersey Divorce and Family Law matters.
Please feel free to take a look at our Firm Website (www.salvaggiolaw.com) for further information about my firm.
The answer to your question is: Unless there are some extenuating circumstances, you should be able to apply to the court to terminate your child support obligation for your daughter.
If your daughter is not your only child with this mother, and the other child(ren) are not emancipated yet, it gets somewhat more complicated because you still owe child support for the unemancipated child(ren) and the amount of that child support may be different than you think that it would be.
In addition, the court may adjust the amount of child support for the other child(ren) because of financial changes that have taken place since the original amount of the child support was set.
It is also important to keep in mind that, although New Jersey law generally provides that child support cannot be reduced retroactively (in other words, the effective date of the reduction cannot be before the filing date of the Motion), that is not true if you can demonstrate to the court that the child became emancipated as of an earlier date.
As you can see, there are a lot of things to take into consideration. Therefore, unless you have a very "cut and dry" situation (only one child, clear emancipation), I think that it is essential that you obtain the assistance of a very experienced lawyer who devotes his/her entire practice to Family Law.
Even if this is your only child, I still recommend that you at least have a meeting with a very experienced lawyer who devotes his/her entire practice to Family Law, to get advice.
I would be happy to have a meeting with you, to get more facts, answer your questions and provide you with guidance. That meeting is called an Assessment, and it is much more than the "free" consultations that are offered by many lawyers. I believe that the value you get from that meeting will exceed the cost of the Assessment.
Your question does not specify the town in which you live. My firm's offices are located in Morristown, NJ (Morris County). We handle cases in all of the counties in northern and central New Jersey, including not only Morris County but also Somerset, Hunterdon, Sussex, Warren, Passaic, Bergen, Hudson, Middlesex and Monmouth counties.
If you live in one of those counties and wish to schedule an Assessment, please call my office (973-455-1220) and speak to the firm’s Client Intake Coordinator Dara Vanderhoof. Please tell her that you are responding to an Answer that I provided you on Lawyers.com. She will be able to arrange a mutually convenient date and time for the Assessment. ...
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