Hello, please let me know if my question/story doesn’t fit in with the purpose of this subreddit. Also please forgive my formatting, as I am on mobile.
This whole situation is a bit complex as far as backstory, but I will try to keep it as clear and concise as possible. There will be a TL;DR at the end of the backstory.
My husband has two children from his first marriage (which was in GA). The ex-wife took advantage of my husband in the divorce agreement, as he could not afford his own attorney to fight it. He ended up being stripped of custody (could only see the children when the mother allowed it and had to be supervised) and was ordered to pay $950 cash to her monthly for child support (about $400 more than he should have been paying for his salary). He met me in 2015 (I am in South Carolina and this is where we currently reside) and soon after that, she moved herself and the children to Texas, basically making it impossible to visit them. My husband and I got married in 2016.
Fast forward to May of 2018, and all the while the ex-wife sends pictures of the children to my husband along with pleas for more money (on top of the child support that he was paying on time). Shortly after one of these instances, my husband got a call from the children’s grandmother, asking him to stop making payments to the ex-wife, as she had not been heard from since Sept. 2017. She wanted him to instead make payments to the ex-wife’s sister who had the children for 8 months so far. The sister had not informed us that she had the children and we had no way of knowing because the ex-wife was pretending that she had them.
This lead to a long custody battle between us and the sister. Since my husband had not seen the children in a couple of years, a year of reunification was ordered by the judge. Despite struggle and resistance from the sister, we received full custody of the children on July 21, 2019. No one has heard from ex-wife still. It is speculated that due to some legal troubles, she fled to Mexico.
TL;DR my husband has two children with ex-wife. Ex-wife kept children from husband. Ex-wife abandoned children with her sister in Sept. 2017 (and we didn’t no find out until May 2018). My husband and I now have full custody (as of July 21, 2019). No one has heard from the ex-wife since Sept. 2017 and she may be out of the country.
This leads to my questions. Are we unable to claim them as dependents since they have been with us less than half the year? We had overnight visits with the children leading up to full custody that would roughly add up for the deficit of days but would that even count?
We would rather be safe than sorry. We do not want to file dependents if we are not eligible. Thanks for any help, advice, or just reading our story!
Submitted January 12, 2020 at 08:54PM by lizellaaa https://ift.tt/2Rc9aKh
