Studio City Attorney, Joann Deutch • (818) 753-9922
Practical Legal Pointers
FAQs about Child Support
Joann R. Deutch , Attorney
I’m gonna call this a Quick Reference Guide for Child Support in California. If you’re not caught in the quicksand, you surely know someone who is. So what’s the most important question?
“How much Child Support can I get?
How much Child Support do I need to pay?”
The Practical Legal Pointers:
Know what you’re up against. Here’s what the Child Support Formula is based on – Your Income. Here are the facts behind the formula. What the Court considers Your Income.
- Wages
- Tips
- Commission
- Bonuses
- Self-employed Earnings
- Unemployment payments
- Disability & Worker’s Comp
- Interest
- Dividends
- Rental Income
- Disability & Social Security Income
- Payments due you - car accident payments/lottery winnings, etc.
It’s not just the money you report on your tax returns. It’s supposed to be everything -doesn’t matter if it’s reported or taxed.
The second part in the formula is where the Court determines your Disposable Income – The Court says you can deduct the items listed below from the total from the list above. This final number gets plugged into the formula to determine Child Support.
- Taxes
- Mandatory Union Dues
- Health Premiums
- Child Support actually paid (for other children)
- Cost of raising children from another marriage
What’s missing? Like - your mortgage payment; your car payment; your car insurance. That’s going to hurt. You can work this formula for yourself by logging on to: https://www.cse.ca.gov/ChildSupport/cse/guidelineCalculator.
Yup - The truth is definitely ugly. But these are the basics facts.
This explains much of the wrangling over how much time the non-paying parent wants/needs to spend with the kids in order to reduce Child Support payments. So what’s left to argue over? Other than the fact that the Child Support is either not enough to live on, or too much to pay?
There is a guidebook that you can read to learn about some of the most common exceptions to this formula. Search for the California Guide Child Support Calculator User Guide. The Guide talks about exceptions like:
- Your “Disposable Income” will be modified by catastrophic illness
- The child support continues until the kids are 18. Beyond that if they are still in school
- Disability income only considers the employers contribution – not what you’ve already paid out of your check.
- You’ll have to pony it up on investments even if they are tax free
Do you really need to pay an attorney fees equal to the cost of sending your kid to college? Well there is some fine print that might change the outcome where lawyer fees are necessary. The classic example is where one parent runs a company and/or “the real income” is a slippery number. A lawyer is going to try to establish “Disposable Income” from information about what I call “The Money Spent Theory”. Instead of looking at tax returns which everyone tries to fudge, I’d want to look at what cars does he/she have; the mortgage note; does the family travel; what are the monthly credit card bills; what other possessions does the family have that represent income spent? If you can spend it, someone has earned it. This is a plain and simple way of getting at what the spouse actually has to spend.
Copyright ©2010, Joann Deutch. All rights Reserved
With Law Offices convenient to Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Valley Village, Van Nuys, North Hollywood and Universal City
(818) 753-9922
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