What are the child support guidelines?
The child support guidelines are required by each state to have a standardized system for determining child support and to receive federal funding. The guidelines are charts based on each parent’s income and the number of children. The guidelines are not exact calculations. There are a number of factors that are used to create the calculation. A court is free to increase or decrease the amount of support as long as it gives reasons for the deviation.
A child support award allows the custodial parent to provide the child with all of the essentials, such as food, clothing, and shelter. In order to ensure that the courts issue consistent child support awards, the State has enacted the Child Support guidelines. These guidelines are a formula which guides the person with factors to consider in reaching a child support award. The guidelines are derived from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The guidelines take income info from both parties, and this info is applied to a formula to calculate a child support award. The current guidelines also provide for a self-support reserve for the payor parent. Basically, this means that if a person is too poor, and they can’t even survive, then they don’t have to pay child support. The self-support reserve is 105% of the poverty guideline for one person.
Syrtash & Grunwald: The Child Support Guidelines were introduced in March of 1996 by the Canadian Government as one method of ensuring that family support obligations were respected. The Guidelines consist of a set of rules and tables for calculating the amount of support that a paying parent should contribute towards his or her children, and were designed to make the calculation of child support fair, predictable and consistent for the benefit of the children. The provinces and territories share responsibility with the federal government for matters relating to child support. In general, the federal Divorce Act sets out the rules for setting child support amounts if you are already divorced or planning to divorce. Provincial laws apply if you have never been married or are separated, or planning to separate, but have decided not to divorce. It should be noted that the Guidelines are exactly that – guidelines. Child support amounts can be adjusted at the discretion of the court to reco
The Court has adopted guidelines intended to provide guidance about what it actually costs to raise children. The Guidelines fix a range of support that should be paid by both parents, proportionate to their incomes. The Court presumes that the Guidelines are correct. However, you may negotiate child support amounts beyond or even below those in the Guidelines. The Court may modify the levels in the Guidelines if it decides that, due to the particular circumstances of your family, the amount is unjust or inappropriate. The Court may deviate from the guidelines if the combined net income of both parties is more than $1,000 per week. Child care costs are considered separately.
