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Child Support - Establishment, Part 9

At this point in the establishment series we have covered all of the basic elements needed to calculate support for most people. The basic elements do not cover everything, though, so this post will address some of the other issues that can come up and which have an effect on the guideline. The first issue is whether either parent is paying spousal support to the other, and if so who pays how much. If there is spousal support being paid because of a court order then it is d

Child Support - Establishment, Part 8

As was mentioned in the last post, a custody order is not necessary to get an order of child support. This post addresses that issue in slightly more detail. A child custody order can be helpful in setting out the exact schedule so that days can be calculated—and they are immensely useful outside the context of child support, but I am limiting myself to support considerations right now—but they are not necessary in order to get support. It is the public policy of Virginia t

Child Support - Establishment, Part 7

Since shared custody can get complicated when it comes to calculating child support, I held off on a more detailed discussion in the last post. We will pick up that thread now. Importantly, this post discusses the idea of a "day" for purposes of the shared custody support guidelines. There are rules about what counts as a “day” for this purpose and usually the most important one to know is that anything that does not include an overnight visit does not count at all toward t

Child Support - Establishment, Part 6

So far we have covered gross income, childcare costs, and healthcare costs. The final basic element of the child support calculation is the custody arrangement. The custody arrangement makes a larger difference than simply deciding who pays whom, although it does usually do that. If parent A is the primary physical custodian of a child then he or she has a right to a determination of how much child support is owed by parent B. This is usually straightforward enough, but th

Child Support - Establishment, Part 5

Prior posts have discussed how income is calculated and what daycare costs are allowed to affect the child support calculation. This post moves on to the next basic element: healthcare costs. Since we are concerned here with child support, the cost of providing health insurance for people other than the children does not count. That means that we need to exclude the cost of healthcare insurance coverage for the parents themselves, any adult children, and any children from o

Child Support - Establishment, Part 4

At this point we have talked about gross income as much as I care to, so we will turn to the next basic element of the guideline support calculation: daycare. Work-related daycare means that the child is in daycare while the custodial parent is at work. If you think that does not need to be spelled out, you would be surprised. Sometimes parents who work part time, or who do not work at all, will have their children in daycare outside of work hours. It is one thing if the c

Child Support - Establishment, Part 3

Last time we talked about the basics of why gross income is used instead of net income and now we will talk a little about how to calculate it. Calculating gross pay is normally very easy: we look at your year-to-date pay stub or your most recent W-2 and do some math to come up with a monthly average. This usually evens out any spikes in pay for overtime or things like that. For most people that is the end of it, but the process is different for self-employed individuals. S

Child Support - Establishment, Part 2

Last time we talked about the five basic things that go into the guideline child support calculation and today we are going to discuss the first two, i.e. the gross monthly incomes of the parents. Notice that the formula uses gross income and not net income. It may seem fair to look at how much someone actually gets each paycheck to determine how much they can afford to pay, but remember that child support is not designed to be fair. It is very easy to add deductions, by in

Child Support - Establishment, Part 1

Before going any further, please enjoy this disclaimer: The content of this post, indeed of all of my posts, is intended to reference only Virginia law. I am writing this blog to give some idea of the complexities that can underlie family law issues in Virginia and in no way am I giving anyone legal advice here. While I hope these posts will be informative, no one should feel entitled to rely on the information presented here as an authoritative source. Anyone facing a le

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