I’ve talked about how child support is calculated before on this blog. I’ve discussed that court generally calculate child support based on a strict, mathematical formulation that is based on values like “gross income” and “insurance payments.” As any good family law lawyer will tell you, in most states, a court does not have a great deal of discretion to vary from the calculation.
To explain, I read an interesting blog post by Judge Steve Halsey about how a child support calculation in Minnesota must be based on the parenting-time ordered by a court at the time of a child support determination. Furthermore, the Minnesota judge may not base his or her decision on how much time a parent is ACTUALLY exercising with their children. Instead, a Minnesota judge may only follow the previous court order in the case – no matter what the actual parenting-time currently is.
This is very interesting to lawyers and (if can explain it adequately) it should be interesting to anybody who may be trying to modify or change their child support based on an allegation that one of the parents is not actually excersing their parenting time.
Generally, I think of child support as being an area of law that is fairly clear-cut. You take a number of factors into consideration – including gross income of both parents, insurance paid for the children, other deductions for child-care and the like, and you plug the numbers into a child support calculator. The calculator comes up with a number that is close to what the court will actually use. The fudge area for attorneys is arguing on points of law like the excercise of parenting-time. In other words, if one parent is exercising more parenting time, the parent pays less. If one parent is exercising less parenting-time with the children, the parent pays more. Pretty simple, right?
However, according to this one opinion out of Minnesota, if a court orders a certain number of days in which the parent gets to exercise parenting-time, that is what the court will use to decide the amount of child support is to be paid. The Minnesota court will use this prior order despite the fact that, in reality, one of the parent may not be exercising the court ordered child support. Seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?
As I’ve stated in this blog many times, you should check with a Dakota County child support lawyer in your state about changes in the law in your state. In Minnesota, the law may be one way, but in other states it may be different. I am currently licensed to practice law in the State of Indiana and the Minnesota law is different from Indiana. However, I wanted to post on this issue because it illustrates the point that many non-lawyers don’t understand. The law changes and you need a qualified lawyer to argue the law on your behalf.
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