One frustrating thing that many divorced parents deal with is the other parent not paying court-ordered child support or even child support that both parents agreed to with the help of lawyers.

If you are in the middle of such a situation, you have several options. However, one mistake to avoid is to withhold visitation from the other parent. If you try this tactic, it could backfire on you, both legally and in the eyes of your children. Here is a look at what you can do with the assistance of your lawyer:

Lawyer reaches out

While you have undoubtedly reached out to the other parent many times already to get the child support owed to you, such attempts tend to carry more weight when a lawyer does them. It may take just one contact from your lawyer to the other parent or the other parent’s lawyer for child support to resume. That said, if you can set up reliable payment methods, such as income withholding, that is probably best. Your lawyer can also explore other tactics if the below two approaches do not work or are unrealistic.

Change the agreement

It could be that the other parent’s financial circumstances have changed enough to warrant modifying the agreement you two drew up. For example, if the other parent agreed to pay $300 a month on top of what the state would have required via a court order and then got cut down to part-time at work, the parent may have fallen into the habit of paying nothing at all instead of what he or she could afford.

The solution may be to modify the agreement, although you might not be getting as much per month as what you originally agreed to.

Set up income withholding

A court would ordinarily have set up income withholding once child support was ordered. This may not have happened if the other parent was between jobs or self-employed. If the parent is now traditionally employed, income withholding should be possible.