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Cal. FAM § 4551

This is the official text of Cal. FAM § 4551, part of California’s Family Code — governs marriage, divorce, child custody and support, domestic violence protections, and adoption. This particular section falls under Division 9, “Support.”

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Official statutory text

Except as provided in this section, this chapter:

(a) Does not apply to a temporary child support order.

(b) Applies to an application for modification of child support filed on or after January 1, 1992, but this chapter does not constitute the basis for the modification.

(c) Applies to an application for modification of child support in a case where the child support obligee has previously waived the establishment of a child support trust account pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 4560 and now seeks the establishment of the child support trust account.

(d) Applies to an order or judgment entered by the court on or after January 1, 1993, ordering a child support obligor to pay a then existing child support arrearage that the child support obligor has unlawfully failed to pay as of the date of that order or judgment, including the arrearages which were incurred before January 1, 1992.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.