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How Does the Court Decide Who Pays Child Support?

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In most instances, the payer is going to be determined by the guidelines and technically both the mom and the dad are payers. Under the new law change we are on the income shares methodology and both parents, their incomes are taken into consideration and both parents are considers obligors. Who pays more is really determined in the guidelines by the percentage of time that you have with the child or children, and that is determined by the guidelines. But there’s basic support, there’s medical support, and then there’s child care support. And for medical and child care support, both parents have a percentage responsibility to pay that. So it could be that mom is the recipient of basic support because she has the children more. Or it’s an equal parenting time schedule, but dad makes more than mom and she will still have the obligation to contribute towards the insurance if dad is paying or towards the childcare if dad is paying it, so one is offset against the other. And when I said most of the time it’s by guidelines you should be aware too that it is possible to deviate from the guidelines either upward or downward and there are specific statutory considerations for doing that. And it’s somewhat rare, but the court can do it, and your case might be the case where you need a deviation.

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