Can father control how ex wife spends child support money?

Attorney Tom Olsen: I had a caller a little while ago and he is divorced and so he is concerned about how the child support that he pays to the mother of his children, how she is spending it. And the question is, does he have any rights or have any kind of accounting or have any kind of court order directing the mom how to spend the child support that he's sending her?

Attorney Paul Newnum: Well, the simple answer, Tom, is no. The child support guidelines were established as a child support guidelines in order to avoid having the courts become accounting services so the support is what it is. If he doesn’t like how it’s being spent, the only thing that he can do is to make sure that the child support is calculated correctly so that he is not paying too much child support.