Mother and Father have two Children, now seventeen and eighteen years old.

Children reside with Father in Ohio. Mother now lives in Florida, although her mother, Grandmother, resides in Ohio.

Mother allegedly failed to pay any child support for Children for over a year between 2012 and 2013. Arrears reportedly amount to $24,000.

Mother is arrested in Ohio on four separate counts of nonsupport of dependents.

Mother offers as excuses:

1. that she never received the correspondence sent to her mother’s address and
2. that Father “said he was going to drop it and they didn’t need (the support).”

Parenthetically,

1. Mother was probably under a legal duty to notify the Ohio family court of any change in her address and is, therefore, in no position to complain about notices being sent to her old address if she never provided her new address and
2. it is, at best, reckless to bet the farm on a purely verbal representation … especially when the legal right supposedly waived belongs to someone else (Children, not Father and, if on public assistance, the State of Ohio).

Presumably so advised, Mother enters a plea bargain in which she pleads guilty to two of the counts in return for the state dropping the other two counts.

Mother obtains employment and begins paying child support.

The presiding Ohio judge indicates an openness to deferring Mother’s sentencing and declining to impose imprisonment if Mother continues to be employed, pay down her arrears and pay current support for the younger of Children.

Read more in this Wooster [OH] Daily Record article: HOLMES FLORIDA WOMAN BEHIND $24,000 IN CHILD SUPPORT .