Calculating Child Support in Hackensack
Parents who live apart must determine how they will share financial responsibility for their children. It is a child’s right to share in the wealth of both their parents, and all parents have an obligation to provide financial support to their children.
Calculating child support in Hackensack is rarely straightforward. Although the state provides a formula, many variables can impact the amount a parent must pay. Working with an experienced family law attorney from Moskowitz Law Group can ensure the child support obligation is fair and sustains your children’s best interests.
Understanding the Law Concerning Child Support
New Jersey policy is that children should not pay an economic price because their parents live apart. Children are entitled to have a lifestyle similar to that of children in intact families whose parents have similar incomes. N.J.S.A. 9:17-53 allows a judge to consider multiple factors when evaluating child support arrangements to ensure they support the children’s best interests in the specific case.
New Jersey’s Child Support Guidelines presume that parents share household living expenses in proportion to their respective incomes. They also presume that parents at similar income levels spend a similar portion of their income on child-raising and that parents providing a household spend a larger percentage of their money on providing for their children than parents who do not live with the children.
The guidelines factor each parent’s income, the number of children they are supporting, and the percentage of time they are providing a home for the children into the support calculation. Other factors also influence the final amount. A Hackensack family law attorney can help a parent decipher the calculation rules and understand the child support obligation that is likely in their specific case.
Basics of Using the Guidelines
The first step in using the guidelines is determining each parent’s gross income. Their gross income is the total of all sources of money, including wages, profits from a business, investments, lottery winnings, overtime pay, and income from trusts, and any other source. Alimony by one party to the other and child support payments paid or received for children outside the marriage also count in the income calculation.
After determining each parent’s gross income, Hackensack parents can subtract taxes and certain other deductions allowed for the purposes of calculating child support. A family law attorney can explain what deductions are permissible. The parents’ net incomes after taxes and deductions are added together. The parents use that sum and the number of children they share to find the guidelines amount for their family.
The parents split the amount based on their proportionate contribution to the family’s net income. For example, a parent who earns 60 percent of the family’s net income would be responsible for 60 percent of the support obligation.
Adjustments to Determine Actual Payment
After finding the guidelines amount, Hackensack parents must make multiple adjustments to determine the final support obligation. Working with a family law attorney from Moskowitz Law Group can ensure that parents understand the adjustments and apply them properly.
The amount of time each parent spends with the children impacts the support amount. When each parent has the children at least 28 percent of the time, there are special deductions available to the paying parent. The deduction reduces the payment because the paying parent is supporting the children in their own home part-time.
The costs of health insurance, dental insurance, and work or school related childcare also are factored into the child support calculations. The parents share these expenses in proportion to their relative incomes.
Variations at Either End of the Income Spectrum
When a parent can prove that paying the guidelines amount would impoverish them, a judge may approve child support less than the amount the guidelines would require. When a family is privileged, a Court is likely to require a child support payment that ensures the children do not experience a significant change in their lifestyle.
Imputation of Income
Sometimes, a parent is unemployed or underemployed. Sometimes, one parent has a credible suspicion that the other is hiding income or not stating their true income to reduce their support obligation. In either case, a Court can impute income.
Imputing income means the Court considers what the person could be earning based on their education or work experience or what they earned in the past of that a persona is truly earning more than what he or she claims in provided documents. The Court could then use that number to decide how much support the parent should pay.
Talk to a Hackensack Family Law Attorney About Child Support Calculations
Determining an appropriate child support amount is complicated despite the guidelines. Get help calculating child support in Hackensack from an experienced family law attorney.
The lawyers at Moskowitz Law Group represent parents in custody and child support matters and can help you reach a child support agreement with your co-parent that will pass judicial scrutiny. Get in touch today to learn more.
