This may be an unpopular opinion, but when it comes to routine and necessary medical care, NCPs just need to pay their fair, COed share without drama.

If BM sends you a picture of a receipt that has a date and patient name on it, pay it. If you have access to claims and the EOB, and you all know how much is owed, pay your portion whether BM turns in receipts how she is "supposed to".

Kids need medical care, and it is expensive. To fight over whether an NCP should pay a bill because a CP was a week late, or the receipt was a scanned copy/picture versus the real one, or the routine appointment (e.g. dental cleaning) could have been slightly cheaper elsewhere is just silly.

Yes, medical abuse happens. Financial abuse through medical procedures happens. However, if you know with relative certainty that a bill belongs to SS, just pay it directly to the doctor. It's one of the few times an NCP can actually see where their money goes directly to their kid, so don't fight over semantics.

I think that the CP needs to provide proper documentation of the expense and show that it was paid for reimbursement.  So I would probably take the picture of a receipt as proof.  I would *not* pay for an appointment without any receipt, though.

As for what expenses get paid first...  I don't want to be out of compliance with a CS order.  Our BM has already filed a contempt charge against DH for not paying a medical expense (because she didn't provide a receipt!), so if I had everything I needed to justify it, I would pay that before everything else.  DH won't get sent to jail for not paying the electric bill in full, but he would if we didn't pay BM.  (Which is completedly Fd up, for the record).

Our BM used to send us the hinkiest receipts on earth. Half the time they were fake, including medical. Or she would bundle several months worth of bills, worth hundreds of dollars, and send them with a note demanding immediate reimbursement. 

She dragged us to court and our judge said she had to provide us with actual receipts and not her fake copies, and that she had to send us the bills 30 days.

If you are ponying up the medical insurance you should be able to verify medical through eobs. If she provides insurance, she should have to provide eobs for reimbursement. No eob. No reimbursement. 

CP is in control of whether a skid will go to the doctor/dentist and there's no requirement that they coordinate with the NCP.  I agree that's not fair.  Unfortunately, it's the way things are, and as NCP, your DH needs to figure out how to deal with it, because it's only going to get worse.  Braces will be needed, as will myriad other things that your DH won't be in charge of.

Meanwhile, you are overfunctioning here and worrying about things that aren't yours to worry about--probably because your DH isn't worrying about them enough.

She sent you the receipt.  Stop saying she didn't.  A picture of a receipt is valid for the IRS, it's valid for FSA accounts, expense accounts and all sorts of reimbursements in business, education and government.  Any judge would find that you (or your DH) was being the difficult one if you say a picture of the receipt isn't the same.

Now, if you think they are being altered... If she knows how to alter a picture of a receipt then she also knows how to photoshop it and reprint it, such that asking for the hard copy won't help.  That's when you verify with the doctor's office AND the EOB together what the amount owed was.  Sometimes you go to the doctor and they estimate that your portion will be $123, but by the time the claim was filed the deductible or oop was met and the amount goes down or disappears.  Or the service turns out to be covered completely because of the way it was billed.  So just because she may have paid at the beginning doesn't mean it was the right amount to pay.  The correct amount may be higher, too, if the service was billed differently.

Then you make a payment arrangement with the doctor's office only.  Two reasons: a) you know your part of the bill gets paid exactly what is due and b) it discourages any future shenanigans on her part because BM learns the money isn't coming to her anyway.  If she's already paid the doctor the full amount, she can get a refund for half her amount from the doctor.  Set the precedent that you will always pay the doctor directly and then you can know that the doctor is being paid your half and there isn't incentive for BM to fib.

Is your DH still on a year to year work visa? How long can he remain unemployed before it causes trouble with his visa status and opens up a whole other set of problems for him? 

My opinion is probably going to be unpopular. 

For the dentist, she sent you a receipt.  Call the insurance company and ask if she paid any portion of that amount or if that was the amount BEFORE insurance paid.  For example, my dental insurance charges me NOTHING (in copays or coinsurance) for my children to have a cleaning every six months.  It is included in my premiums.  However, if I were to ask for a copy of the receipt for the services, the dental office would print me a receipt for the total cost of the service because the insurance company HAS NOT PAID yet.  There is NO WAY on earth I would pay a bill if the patient's responsibility says "$0".  Even if the patient made a payment at the time of service, it would still show up on the bills as "patient's responsibility."  At the bottom of the EOB it would say, "Amount due."  If the patient's portion was paid, the amount due would be zero.  If the patient hadn't made any payment, it would state the amount due.  If the patient's responsibility was zero, then the amount due would also be zero -- meaning no copays or coinsurance was incurred.  

As to the doctor's bill, it is not the father's responsibility to chase down a receipt.  If the mother wants to be reimubrsed for purchases she made that the father owes on, she needs to get a receipt and provide it to the father. If she made no payments, but payments are due, she needs to provide a bill and say, "You owe half."  This whole, "You are the father and it is your responsibliity to track down any liability that may or may not have been incurred on behalf of your child" is absolutely ridiculous.  The court order says mother to provide a receipt and father is to pay half.  Period.  If not receipt is provided, mother does not want to get reimbursed.

My husband has always had custody of his children.  We never provided his ex with receipts for medical care.  She wouldn't have paid and it was not worth the drama.  We didn't need the money and neither did the children.  It was not her responsibliity to check to see if there were bills out there she owed half of.

Make her produce a receipt or don't pay.  Just my $.02.

both my and my DH’s employer require us to submit receipts electronically.  This means they are either scanned or we use a phone app to take a nicely trimmed and framed image.  

If it is is good enough for large corporations and the IRS, it is good enough for child support accounting.