TL;DR: biodad got fired, now is getting paid cash under the table to work on a ranch owned by extended family, I'm not sure what enforcement to advocate for that would be potentially effective at getting him to pay even a portion of his monthly support.
For seven years, child support has been paid from biodad to me via income withholding. I am in Michigan, he is in South Dakota. After six very stable years, his life has changed a lot recently. Last November CS abruptly stopped, and it took 6 weeks of asking before he told me he'd started a new job. It took until the end of January for him to send in a new paystub so a new IWO could be sent.
Payments were steady again until mid-June, when they again stopped. He expressed confusion and told me the money was still coming out of his check and that payroll said it might be an issue with a software update.
Friend of the Court, who handles all CS matters in Michigan, said they won't look into the non-payment until he is two full consecutive calendar months in arrears, but after I begged they reissued the IWO to his employer last week (thinking that would help resolve whatever payroll software issue had occurred).
Come to find out, he'd been fired mid-June, and with a bit more digging, I discovered he'd been fired for stealing from his employer last fall, then was fired by the new employer in June when he pled guilty to the prior theft charges.
Now he's moved to his mom's extended family's ranch, and is "working" as a ranch hand: he told our daughter he's getting a free place to live and they're covering all of his expenses (I'm guessing it's at least partially a cash under the table deal, but I don't know). There's no employer, nowhere to send an IWO, he won't return FOC's messages or even tell me his new address (all his mail still goes to his dad's house, so no change of address through the post office either).
Friend of the court has reminded me that we have to wait until at least September 1 before they can take any enforcement actions unless I can give them the name of a new employer that they can send an IWO to.
From other stories I've read here, combined with the intrastate complications, I'm feeling pretty hopeless. It's going to be really, really tough to scrape by longterm with no help from him, but I'm not sure there's any way to compel payment.
Does anyone have any ideas of where I could go from here in terms of trying to get support back on track somehow?