Hopefully someone knows more about child support than me....
Hi Everyone,
Just a bit of background. I have been with my partner for 18months now. We live together and have 4.5 year old SD 6 nights per fortnight. To child support this equates to us having a care percentage of approx. 40%. Despite this care percentage my partner pays for 50% of daycare fees (essentially one day that BM needs not us). My partner and BM have always had a mutual written agreement relating to child support payments and care percentage but recently BM has began to threaten that she is going to reduce our custody and go through chiild support to get more money. I am not worried about the custody threat as my partner is a fantastic dad and there is absolutely no reason why the court would rule against him. I do have a query however relating to whether or not child care payments are considered when working out child support payments and if my partner paying more than his care percentage in child care should reduce the child support amount?
Thank you in advance to anyone who can shed some light on this for me.
It really depends on where
It really depends on where you live. You should be able to find some information on the Internet.
So your BM has the child 2
So your BM has the child 2 more nights than your boyfriend does? Fortnight is "DURING a 2week period" here in america. 2weeks is 14nights..YOU have the child 6nights during a 2 week time frame?
IF In fact she only has 2 extra nights...it is doubtful more CS will be awarded to her. BUT if boyfriend wage is higher OR bm's wage is lower, then maybe.
I agree to look on line for your area. OR Maybe someone here from your country can chime in.
Depends a lot - here, the NCP
Depends a lot - here, the NCP pays full child support no matter how many days they have the child, even with 50/50. Yes, it's insane. But that's how it goes.
Location
Thanks for the comments guys, I guess I should have added that we are in NSW Australia.
I am in Sydney
In our case DH gave BM the family home (tell me about it) and it didn’t reduce the child support amount that he had agreed by a separate court order. That’s a bit of a different scenario than you are talking about though.
Get your other half to call the child support agency to clarify where you stand. They have always clarified the position with DH by phone when the kids moved from BM’s to ours full time.
She can threaten to reduce
She can threaten to reduce custody but she doesn't have the power or the right to do that. All she can do is take you back to court to try and win more time with her child - and unless there's a good reason (i.e. not just that she wants more time/CS) she isn't guaranteed to get it. In fact, with current trends being as they are, she could well find herself in a 50/50 situation.
I would suggest that you find
I would suggest that you find a local child support calculator online. In my state in the US it is call supportsolver.com.
I am sure there is something in your area too, or if not, see if you know the info to see where you land and if you are feeling comfortable with what is going out. There really isn't too big of a difference in the calculator amount here - there are issues with how long you pay CS depending on the state... but the amount doesn't vary much from place to place. It is all about income.
https://www.humanservices.gov
https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/enablers/basic-child-suppor...
here is a link to a site that explains how it is calculated.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as splitting the cost based on the amount of time someone has custody of the child. Under AU's set up a few things come into account.
1. higher earners will pay a higher percentage of cost.
2. The person with more custody time will generally recieve more support.
Your SO's EX may have worked out that your SO is significantly underpaying based upon the guidelines... so the best defense for him is to become educated about the full process and what his true obligations are.
Generally in the US Day Care
Generally in the US Day Care is not part of CS and often is additional to the base CS order. In our case, half of our costs for daycare were added to the NCP's CS amount until SS turned 12yo. At 12 either the NCP or my wife were to notify the court so that the CS could be reduced by half of the day care costs.
We of course were not making that call and the NCP never did so the SpermClan kept paying for half of daycare (though SS was not in day care) for 6 more years until SS aged out from under the Custody/Visitation/Support order.
I have no idea how it works in Oz. But we do have some friends who may know if you would like me to ask.
Let me know.
As others have recommended, I suggest that you Google your State's CS calculator and run different scenarios to get an idea what the likely impact may be to the CS picture. In the US each state has an online CS calculator that gives a reasonably accurate estimate of CS based on the income of each BioParent and the parenting time each has with the child(ren). Most of the US State calculators also factor in non-joint children to the estimated CS calculation.
Good luck.