The question I get most often about unpaid child support isn’t how much is owed. It’s whether it’s too late to do anything about it. A parent has been carrying a balance for years, the child is grown, and they’ve assumed the window closed a long time ago.
Usually it hasn’t. Texas puts two separate deadlines on child support enforcement, they sit a full decade apart, and which one applies depends on what you’re asking the court to do about the money.
Two remedies, two clocks
Both deadlines live in Texas Family Code section 157.005, and the difference between them is the difference between punishing a violation and collecting a debt.
Contempt: two years
Contempt is a finding that a person violated a clear court order they were able to follow. It is the remedy with teeth, and it is the one that expires first.
Under section 157.005, a court keeps jurisdiction to hold someone in contempt for failing to comply with a child support order only if the motion for enforcement is filed no later than the second anniversary of the date the child becomes an adult, or the date the support obligation ends under the order or by operation of law.
Texas Government Code section 21.002 sets what contempt can cost. For a district court, the punishment is a fine of up to $500, confinement in the county jail for up to six months, or both.
The money judgment: ten years
An arrearage is the running total of what was ordered and never paid. Confirming it means asking the court to add it up and enter it as a cumulative money judgment, which is the step that turns missed payments into a collectible debt.
Section 157.005 gives you until the tenth anniversary of the same two triggering dates to file a motion requesting that judgment. Same statute, same starting point, five times the runway.
What these deadlines do not do
This is where most of the confusion sits, so it’s worth being blunt about it.
They don’t run from the last missed payment. A payment missed in 2014 doesn’t have its own clock. Both deadlines run from the child turning 18 or the support obligation ending, whichever the order and the law point to. That’s why an arrearage from years back is often still in reach.
Year two isn’t a forgiveness date. When the contempt window closes, the debt doesn’t go anywhere. What’s gone is the ability to ask for jail or a fine. The money judgment route stays open for eight more years after that.
Enforcement is not modification. A motion to enforce collects what an existing order already required. Changing what is owed going forward is a different filing with a different standard. People sometimes arrive expecting one hearing to do both, and it doesn’t work that way.
Attorney’s fees are usually not optional
This part surprises people on both sides of the case. Under Texas Family Code section 157.167, if the court finds that the respondent failed to make child support payments, the court is directed to order that respondent to pay the movant’s reasonable attorney’s fees and all court costs in addition to the arrearages.
A court can waive that for good cause if it states its reasons. But where contempt is found and the arrearages are $20,000 or more, the waiver narrows sharply. The court can only excuse the fees if the respondent is involuntarily unemployed or disabled and lacks the financial resources to pay them.
Read the other direction, that same provision means the cost of bringing a legitimate enforcement action often does not land on the parent who was owed the money.
The mistake to avoid while you wait
Support and possession are separate obligations in Texas. Withholding the children because support hasn’t been paid does not create leverage. It creates a second enforcement case with the other parent as the one filing it. It comes up in nearly every first meeting I have on this, and the answer is the same every time: run the two issues on separate tracks.
What actually helps your case
Bring the order itself, not your memory of it. Bring a payment history. If support runs through the state disbursement unit, that record already exists and is far more persuasive than a reconstructed list. Note the dates the obligation was supposed to end, because those dates are what both deadlines are measured from.
If you’re missing half of this, come anyway. Sorting out which deadline you’re actually working against is usually the first thing we do, and it’s a faster conversation than people expect. You can read more about how we handle enforcement of Texas family law orders before you call.
If you’re owed child support in Collin, Dallas, or Denton county and you’re not sure whether the clock has run, that’s worth a conversation with a family law attorney rather than a guess. Our office is in Frisco.