CHILD SUPPORT
Generally speaking, child support should be non-contentious. It is particularly easy for the payor parent to pay child support for only one child.
It is hard but doable to pay for two children.
If one has three or more children, it is very difficult to afford to pay child support.
In most cases child support is made up of one or two components:
- Base amount, based on the payor’s gross income for the previous year, if he or she was an employee.
- A share of extra-expenses: usually child care expenses for younger children and such things as music lessons or sports or other extracurricular expenses for older children. For children over 18, the big “add-on” is part of tuition or school fees.
Child support calculations are easy in cases where one parent has the child or children most of the time and the other parent’s gross income is straight-forward because they are an employee paid a wage.
In this case you just go to the Child Support Guideline table amounts based on the payor’s gross income and that sets out the amount owing every month.
Child support is more difficult when:
- The income of the payor is hard to calculate or much of that income is under the table and not declared (for example, some taxi drivers, construction workers or other employees who have their own company, etc.);
- The amount of time the kids spend with each parent is almost equal;
- The kids are over 18 and may or may not be in full-time school;
- One party is seeking a long period of retroactive child support;
- There are big extra-expenses like day care, private school, etc.
- Some other circumstances
If you need child support or are facing a claim for child support, you may contact Guy Hunter for a free half hour consultation.
Table amount
In simple cases, the amount of child support paid is based on the Table. In more complicated cases, the Table is used as the starting point for deciding the amount of support.
If the parents do not agree on the amount of support, they may go to court. Sometimes, a judge might not accept what the payor parent says their income is. For example, if the parent:
- fails to share information about their income,
- does not have a job or is underemployed on purpose, or
- is self-employed or is being paid in cash, and there is reason to believe they do not report all of their income.
Then the judge might decide on a figure for the parent’s income that is reasonable based on things such as the parent’s work history, past income, and education. This is called imputing income.
Special or extraordinary expenses
- child care fees, such as daycare,
- Dental care or health insurance premiums
- their child’s health expenses, such as orthodontics, prescriptions or eyeglasses
- reasonable and extraordinary expenses for school or educational programs to meet the child’s particular needs, such as tutors or private school fees
- expenses for post-secondary education
- reasonable and extraordinary expenses for the child’s extracurricular activities, such as competitive sports classes, that are not covered by the table amount
In most cases, both parents contribute to special expenses based on how much they make. If a child pays toward their own expenses, that amount is subtracted before the parents divide the expense.
Guy Hunter believes you should not have to spend a lot of money on a lawyer to resolve most child support issues. That said, is Guy Hunter more then willing to assist if you can not resolve the issue on your own.
When every attempt is made to provide helpful information in this website, you may not rely on the information above as legal advice.