No Kidding Around: The Serious Matter Of Determining Who Pays Child Support

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When couples divorce, there is almost always a fifty-fifty split on child placement and custody. However, if there are special circumstances involved, such as one parent is in jail, or one parent is rarely around because he/she is constantly traveling for work is deployed in the military, the parent who remains at closest to home more often may have the larger percentage or majority of placement time. Sometimes one parent is not fit to parent, and then the other parent might receive full custody. However, that does not mean that the custodial parent will receive a large sum of child support. Here is how judges and child support lawyers typically determine who pays child support. 

Whoever Has the Higher Wages, Pays

This is a common practice when examining who can pay child support and who cannot. Usually, the parent with a higher salary or better wages is the payor, and the payee, or recipient of the child support, has lower wages or salary. Because of the many instances in unequal pay between genders, this has often led to the father paying child support, but women are beginning to make more money than men because they are taking higher-paying jobs and careers.

Your lawyer and the judge will look at the income of both parents to determine who should pay whom. It could very well work out that you have the kids all of the time, but your ex pays little to no child support while you pay him/her child support when the children are with him/her. This might happen if you make more money, are more able to support the children's needs, your ex is not available or around most of the time, and his/her wages would not be enough to pay child support. 

Whoever Has the Kids Less Often, Pays

Another common ruling in regards to child support is that the parent who has the children significantly less often pays the parent who has the children for a much larger percentage of the time each month. Income is not considered, regardless of the fact that the person that does not have custody may make less or be unemployed or that the person with custody makes a lot of money. The courts are not concerned with any perceived notion of "fairness;" they only view the idea of both parents providing almost equally for all of the shared biological children. 

For more information, check out child support lawyers in your area.

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5 August 2019