Unpaid child support is the most common enforcement problem I deal with, and it’s also the one where people wait the longest before doing anything. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They keep hoping it’ll turn around. And two years later they’re owed twenty thousand dollars and they’ve convinced themselves it’s too late to do anything about it.
It’s not too late, and Texas gives you more tools here than in almost any other area of family law. Let me walk you through what they are.
The unpaid support is already a judgment waiting to happen
Start with the thing most people don’t know. Each child support payment that comes due and goes unpaid becomes a debt that can be confirmed by the court and reduced to a money judgment. The court doesn’t get to forgive it, reduce it retroactively, or decide it’s water under the bridge because the obligor lost a job or because you didn’t complain fast enough. The arrearage is the arrearage.
Getting it confirmed matters, because a confirmed money judgment is enforceable the way other judgments are, and it gives you something concrete to collect against.
Interest runs on it too, and there’s a change here you need to know about. Under Texas Family Code § 157.265, delinquent child support has long accrued interest at six percent simple interest per year. But the legislature lowered that rate, and arrears or judgments arising on or after January 1, 2026 accrue at three percent simple interest instead. Older delinquencies stay at six percent. So if you’re dealing with arrears that span that date, you’re looking at two different rates on two different pieces of what you’re owed, and you want your accounting to reflect that rather than applying one rate to everything.
Getting the payment record right
Before you file anything, get the payment history, because your motion is going to live or die on the numbers. If payments were supposed to run through the state disbursement unit, there’s an official record and you should pull it. If the obligor was paying you directly, or paying partly through the registry and partly in cash, you’ve got a reconciliation job ahead of you.
Be scrupulously honest in that accounting, and give credit for everything you actually received, including payments made outside the registry if you got them. Nothing damages your credibility faster than an arrearage calculation the other side can poke holes in, and if the judge decides your numbers are inflated, they’re going to look at everything else you say differently.
Build it as a simple ledger. Month, amount ordered, amount received, running balance. A judge can follow that in thirty seconds.
Wage withholding
If there isn’t already an income withholding order in place, that’s usually the first practical fix, and it’s the one that stops the bleeding going forward. Withholding takes the payment out of the obligor’s paycheck before it ever reaches them, which removes the monthly decision about whether to pay you. It can also be used to collect on arrears in addition to the current obligation.
Withholding is administratively simple compared to most of what happens in family court, and it’s an enormous quality-of-life improvement for both households, because it takes money out of the monthly conversation entirely. If you’re owed support and there’s no withholding order, that’s where I’d start.
License suspension and the other pressure points
Texas also allows suspension of licenses for a delinquent obligor, and that reaches further than people expect. It’s not just a driver’s license. Professional licenses, occupational licenses, and hunting and fishing licenses can all be in play.
I’ll be straight with you about how I think about this tool. It’s real leverage, and sometimes it’s the only thing that gets someone’s attention. It’s also capable of backfiring badly, because suspending the driver’s license or professional license of the person who owes you money can make it harder for them to earn the money they owe you. If the obligor is a plumber whose license is his livelihood, think carefully about whether you want that, or whether the threat of it is worth more than the fact of it.
Contempt is also available where the failure to pay was willful and the obligor had the ability to pay, and that carries the possibility of jail. That’s the heaviest tool in the box, and courts treat it accordingly. If you go that route, the pleading rules matter enormously, and I’ve written about how to draft an enforcement motion that survives.
The Attorney General, and when to use them
The Office of the Attorney General enforces child support orders and it costs you nothing, which makes it the right answer for a lot of people. If the obligor is a W-2 employee with a findable job, the arrearage isn’t complicated, and you can be patient, open a case and let them work it.
Where I’d think twice is when the obligor is self-employed, paid in cash, hiding income through a business, or moving between jobs faster than the system can track. The OAG handles enormous volume, they don’t do the kind of digging that a contested income fight requires, and they represent the State’s interest in the support order rather than representing you personally. If your case needs discovery, subpoenas to banks, and a real fight about what somebody actually earns, you’re better off driving it yourself.
You can also do both, and plenty of people do. An OAG case running in the background doesn’t stop you from filing your own enforcement action.
Stop waiting
The most expensive decision I see people make here is delay. Every month you wait is another month of arrears you’re financing for somebody else, another month of records getting harder to reconstruct, and another month of the obligor learning that nothing happens when they don’t pay.
You are not being petty by enforcing a court order. That money was ordered for your children, a judge decided the number, and collecting it is exactly what the system is set up to let you do.
I’m not an attorney and this isn’t legal advice. I’m a coach who helps pro se litigants in Texas family law cases understand the process and prepare their own case. If you’re owed support and don’t know where to start, let’s build the ledger and figure out your best route.