The bottom line is he isn't meeting his agreement with the child support as of the last 12 months, and it still doesn't appear even very recently that he's been making the full payments, and that is why an underwriter would be reluctant to use the income. If it was payroll deducted where you got the full amount like clockwork every single time it was owed, arrears included, I could see an underwriter not requiring 12 months of on time payments and probably would just be satisfied with 3-6 months of on time payments, but that doesn't appear to be the case or else there wouldn't be recent missed payments. Can you go to court to get the amount he owes you lowered so he can actually start making the full amount each month? Can he enroll to have it auto deducted from his paychecks? Those two items will go a long way for you to be able to use that child support income to qualify.
I understand your frustration, it stinks having how much you can qualify for change so drastically after simple documents like tax returns and child support evidence should have been reviewed from the very beginning. But it's in the past, so just gather yourself and think objectively how to make the best out of the current situation. If you are not already under contract on a home, you may want to ask them to give you a list of all of their possible concerns with your situation, how they plan on getting to the bottom of those concerns, and how long they anticipate it'll take them to do so... then you'll find out "Oh it's going to take another 2-3 days for them to gather up all of the documents, then send them to an underwriter where another 2 days to review, and then I'll find out the bottom line how much I am pre-approved for." After that, if it still qualifies you for what you need to be able to buy for your family, and the loan terms are good, and you like working with them, then you may have found the lender you'll want to go through the entire process with. If you find they can't qualify you for what you need, you don't like working with them, or the terms aren't very good then you should seek other mortgage lenders pre-approvals to determine if you can improve on the areas you'd like. If you are already under contract and they cannot approve you for the home you are buying, I'd copy/paste that depreciation information into an email to your loan officer and see if that would do the trick to get you approved... if not, then you should call up another lender or two while you still have your financing contingency to figure out if you should back out of the contract and get your earnest money back while you still can.
Not all lenders add back depreciation, but most do.
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