[Text on screen: Child Support Services: A Letter from a  Customer]

[Text on screen: Meet Marti Crissup]

Marti Crissup: I’ve had a child support case since 2009. 

[Text on screen: In June 2018, she sent a letter to Child Support Services.]

So, it was really actually a very easy process.  It was part of the order when we were in court, in 
District Court, and we were talking about child support and how that was going to be paid. It 
was an assignment agreement that was done and so from that point on the child support 
payments went to DHS Child Support and then they came to me through that on a debit card. It 
was great. 

[Text on screen: What is child support for you family?]

Child support to me is money for myself and my kids to live essentially really. So, for assistance 
with paying for my home, for buying groceries, for paying for extracurricular activities that the 
kids are doing, just those type of things. 

[Text on screen: How is you child support order working?]

It worked very well while he was employed but at some point he made a decision to become 
self-employed and at the point in time that he decided to become self-employed all child 
support payments stopped and that’s when I was contacting DHS Child Support asking for 
enforcement. 

[Text on screen: How happened?]

It didn’t feel as if anything was necessarily being done. I was calling, I was asking for 
enforcement but it was a little challenging. You know you call in and you’re kind of calling in to 
a contact center and they take a note and they give it to your case worker and then your case 
worker does something, but you don’t really know what the case worker does until you call 
back and ask, and so there were a lot of phone calls that I was making over a course of several 
years and I would get some great updates, then I would also sometimes be a little frustrated 
that things weren’t moving and silently behind the scenes Child Support was there doing things 
on behalf of myself and my children. 

[Image and text: Marti’s Letter, June 6, 2018]

So looking at bank accounts and identifying if money was there that could be levied to pay back 
child support and so there was an amount of $31,000 that was left against a judgement and at 
some point Child Support grabbed that. They saw it in his account and they grabbed it and they 
held it. 

[Image and text: Chickasha Area Child Support building]

So at that point in time I started working with Ann Murray in the Chickasha office. It took an 
entire day. She went back and forth between the room I was in and the room that my ex-s 
attorney was in and she was able to make something happen that had not happened ever 
before through at least three, if not four court cases when I had an attorney myself that I was 
paying. Ann made it very clear to me that she was not representing me, which she did not, but 
she did act in the best interest of my daughter and my family and she negotiated what I 
thought was an amazing settlement that day. We did not need to step in front of the judge to 
get an order and I left there with a large, knowing that I was going to be getting a very large 
amount of the money that had been levied on our behalf, and so she also was able to get an 
agreement for the go forward child support order that I didn’t think was possible and she did all 
of that while treating me with a great deal of respect. We had had a prior court order that 
hadn’t been resolved. Once that was done I walked away with $21,000 that was going to be 
coming to us, plus during that time frame that’s not even necessarily captured in that, another 
piece that DHS took care of for us is that his tax refund was intercepted and there was I think 
$9,000 that came from that. 

[Text on screen: How will your child support work moving forward?]

The initial order that his attorney put together said that I would be receiving $97.00 per month 
from him to assist with raising our child and when we left after the day of negotiation I believe 
the amount was $380.00 a month that he is paying and that is child support and child care. 

[Text on screen: How has child support made a difference for you and your family?]

Child support has been a big deal for my family in that for so long it wasn’t paid and when it 
wasn’t paid it was me on my own supporting both of my children with no assistance from 
anyone else, which meant that we really had the basics, sorry. We were watching my ex-
husband take extravagant vacations and take my daughter on those vacations but not be able 
to do those kind of things ourselves. So that was a big deal. Also extracurricular activities, today 
in this day and age extracurricular activities can be very expensive. When you think about the 
competitive environment that most of even baseball or softball or gymnastics or dance. If you 
participate in those things more than once or twice a week they want you to be competitive. So 
the price can be astronomical. 

[Text on screen: Do you have any advice for other parents with child support cases?]

Yes, I do and I will gladly tell you about that and I tell lots of other people that when they ask, 
don’t give up. So first of all just understand that you have a piece in it, right. You have to be 
willing to make the phone calls and you have to be willing to stay invested and let Child Support 
know what’s going on. Keep a record of that, make sure you follow up on it. Trust that 
something is being done because something is. Something very big. Child Support Services first 
of all renewed my faith in the system. It also empowered us, you know, it was really defeating 
for a long time to think that help is not coming (laughter) and help came. A higher quality of life 
I would say is absolutely what Child Support has given us.

[Image: Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Child Support Services logo.]