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730 - How Much Will Child Support Be?Child support is different from most of the issues in divorce, because, unlike so many other issues where the judge has broad discretion to rule in whatever way he or she believes is fair, child support for most divorcing parents is a function of specific guidelines that spell out the exact amount that should be paid. The formula depends on your gross income, your spouse's gross income, any prior alimony or child support, the number of young children you have, the costs of work‑related child care, and the cost of health insurance for the children. Income is total income from all sources, including bonus, commission, overtime, and any moonlighting. If one of you is an entrepreneur, it's the total revenue from your business minus ordinary and necessary business expenses. For health insurance, most judges ‑ not all, but most ‑ use the total family health insurance premium, even though a portion of that premium may pay for insurance for the parent or for children by another marriage. Here's how you can figure child support. You take your gross income and your spouse's gross income, less any preexisting child support or alimony either of you has to pay, and you add them together. You look up the total gross income for the two of you together along with the number of young children you have, in a big table included in Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Judicial Administration. The table will give you what's called a basic child support amount. Then you add to that basic amount the cost of any work‑related child care and the cost of any health insurance for the children. That produces the total child support figure. The next thing you do is to apportion that total child support figure between the two of you, based on each of your incomes as a percentage of the total income. The parent who doesn't have custody of the children will pay to the parent who does have custody his or her share of the total. There's an online child support calculator on my web site Divorceinfo.com. It's just step by step, and it's not all that complicated. Alabama Family Law Center serves clients who need to get through divorce and who are able to be reasonably cooperative. The goal is for both spouses to survive divorce and move on with their lives with some money in their pockets and their dignity intact. No representation is made that the quality of the legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers. If you'd like to make an appointment with me, call 205-979-6960. Or you can click here to return to the Divorce Line. |
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