Out of State - Cost of Living?

[vadad1]

Hi Lee...

I've been reading your blogs for a while... learned a ton, thanks.

I live in the Metro Washington DC area. My wife lives in a very small town in Alabama. I was recently sued for divorce after 16 years of marriage. We only lived in Alabama for a couple of years before we moved, and lived in the Metro DC area for the last 6 years.

Prior to our divorce, we were never in a financial position to buy a home. I?m now being told by her lawyer that Rule 32 will be enforced with no cost of living consideration. As you know, DC is very expensive to live, Alabama is not.

So, what they did was take my DC salary, and applied it like I was living in Alabama. Now my stbx is in the process of buying a 115k home, and I?m relegated to a 1 bedroom apartment. Like I said, we could never have afforded a home up here, and due to the job market in Alabama, I wouldn?t be able to relocate down there as I would take a 35% pay hit? as according to Salary.com.

Is this fair? I feel like I?m now anchored in DC because my child support amount won?t let me relocate near my children. I also feel like I?m being taken advantage of as their standard of living has actually greatly improved and mine has gone down quite a bit. My kids are 14 and 16 years old.

[m_t]

How long have she and the kids been living in 'Bama? Where did you file?

[TC]

The problem here is that CS has nothing to do with your personal living conditions.  CS is designed to maintain the status quo with regard to the children's living conditions and lifestyle at the time of divorce with allowances for reasonable expections or improvements in said living conditions and lifestyle figured in had the couple remained married.. 

The law is focused on the wellfare of the children...period. 

TC

[InDenial]

Well I think I see his point.  His children had a certain standard of living in DC, because Dad made X, while housing and so forth cost Y. 

Now they've moved to Alabama and the cost of living is much lower.  However Dad is making child support payments based on his DC salary, so the kids' standard of living has gone UP.

We could see the opposite problem if Dad lived in Alabama and made Alabama wages, and Mom moved the kids to a high-cost area.  Then the standard child support formula wouldn't go very far in supporting the kids in the lifestyle they had enjoyed in Alabama.

What hasn't been covered is why the kids were able to move away from Dad in the first place.

[TC]

Well I think I see his point.  His children had a certain standard of living in DC, because Dad made X, while housing and so forth cost Y. 

Now they've moved to Alabama and the cost of living is much lower.  However Dad is making child support payments based on his DC salary, so the kids' standard of living has gone UP.

We could see the opposite problem if Dad lived in Alabama and made Alabama wages, and Mom moved the kids to a high-cost area.  Then the standard child support formula wouldn't go very far in supporting the kids in the lifestyle they had enjoyed in Alabama.

What hasn't been covered is why the kids were able to move away from Dad in the first place.

Not necessarily.....most states (not all, but most) now use a standardized formula for figuring child support and cost of living/locality is not figured into the equation.

TC

[m_t]

And... Dad could've fought the relocation of the kids. Did he?

[InDenial]

Another way to look at it is: if the CP is able to support the kids more frugally than expected, should the NCP get some relief on the child support payments?  In this case the CP economized by moving to a lower cost area.  But there are plenty of other ways a CP might save money in taking care of the kids.

The usual answer is: No the child support payments are standardized, and the CP can spend them however he/she sees fit.  If the CP gets a great deal on cheap housing, the NCP doesn't get to share in the savings.  They are divorced after all.

My uncle, who has worked in child support enforcement for 3 decades, says the standardized formula/tables are a great thing, because they eliminate the wrangling about how much child support payments should be.  However they don't eliminate the bad feeling obviously.

I'm also intrigued by VaDad's claim that he can't relocate to be closer to his kids.  Is that really so?  Why not move to Alabama, take the 30% paycut, and have child support figured on the new amount?  Mom could argue that he's capable of making more, but he could counter with his info from Salary.com.

[InDenial]

Not necessarily.....most states (not all, but most) now use a standardized formula for figuring child support and cost of living/locality is not figured into the equation.

TC

What I was thinking, but obviously didn't make clear, is that cost of living is "implicitly" figured into the equation.  If I have certain skills for a given profession, I can expect to get paid X to do that in New York City, or X/2 to do that anywhere else!  So if I live and work in NYC, my child support payments would be based on X, but the cost of living is also higher there.  If I move elsewhere, my salary goes down, and so do the child support payments, AND the cost of living.

vadad1 says he would get paid 30% less to do the same job in Alabama, and presumably the cost of living is similarly lower.   If an intact family moves to Alabama, presumably they come out roughly the same in terms of their standard of living even when the breadwinners take a 30% paycut.

I think that's sort of the thesis here: that salaries for a given individual are roughly correlated to cost of living where they are, so the amount needed to support the children in a given lifestyle is ALSO correlated with the salary.  That assumption doesn't hold if the CP and NCP live in vastly different cost-of-living areas.  But that leads to the questions, WHY don't they live in the same area?  Why did the kids move away from Dad?  Can Dad move to the low cost living area?

If the situation were reversed, and STBX moved the kids to NYC, would he insist on increasing his child support payments in order to keep the kids in the same standard of living?

[TC]

Not necessarily.....most states (not all, but most) now use a standardized formula for figuring child support and cost of living/locality is not figured into the equation.

TC

What I was thinking, but obviously didn't make clear, is that cost of living is "implicitly" figured into the equation.  If I have certain skills for a given profession, I can expect to get paid X to do that in New York City, or X/2 to do that anywhere else!  So if I live and work in NYC, my child support payments would be based on X, but the cost of living is also higher there.  If I move elsewhere, my salary goes down, and so do the child support payments, AND the cost of living.

vadad1 says he would get paid 30% less to do the same job in Alabama, and presumably the cost of living is similarly lower.   If an intact family moves to Alabama, presumably they come out roughly the same in terms of their standard of living even when the breadwinners take a 30% paycut.

I think that's sort of the thesis here: that salaries for a given individual are roughly correlated to cost of living where they are, so the amount needed to support the children in a given lifestyle is ALSO correlated with the salary.  That assumption doesn't hold if the CP and NCP live in vastly different cost-of-living areas.  But that leads to the questions, WHY don't they live in the same area?  Why did the kids move away from Dad?  Can Dad move to the low cost living area?

If the situation were reversed, and STBX moved the kids to NYC, would he insist on increasing his child support payments in order to keep the kids in the same standard of living?

Your state may be different, but in the three states I've dealt with, my child support payments were based on three years worth of tax returns for me. My profession or earning potential based off of a profession had nothing to do with it.   The only time a professional equivilency is impuned is when one party either doesn't work, quits their job in an attempt to reduce CS payments or refuses to provide said tax returns or proof of income.  Otherwise, the courts I've dealt with go off recent past earning history...period.

TC

[InDenial]

Your state may be different, but in the three states I've dealt with, my child support payments were based on three years worth of tax returns for me. My profession or earning potential based off of a profession had nothing to do with it.   The only time a professional equivilency is impuned is when one party either doesn't work, quits their job in an attempt to reduce CS payments or refuses to provide said tax returns or proof of income.  Otherwise, the courts I've dealt with go off recent past earning history...period.

TC

Absolutely.  I didn't mean to imply that the courts typically base child support on a person's profession.  They shouldn't need to, because we don't expect many people to work at a salary significantly below their true earning potential, just to reduce their child support payments.  That would be like turning down a $10,000 bonus at work because you don't want to pay taxes on it.  As you point out, for those few who DO behave this way, the courts can address it.  In my state it's called "Voluntary Reduction of Income".

[m_t]

I'm also intrigued by VaDad's claim that he can't relocate to be closer to his kids.  Is that really so?  Why not move to Alabama, take the 30% paycut, and have child support figured on the new amount?  Mom could argue that he's capable of making more, but he could counter with his info from Salary.com.

That's not how it works - that would be considered a voluntary decrease in income. He really is pretty well stuck - the thing to have done would have been to fight the relocation of the kids when Mom moved.

[vadad1]

Thanks all for your help. The reason I didn't fight the move is that she said she needed some "time" to think. I was under the impression they were going to return. It wasn't until I got sued for divorce that I realized that they weren't coming back.

She lied to me and fed me a line of lies until she met her residency requirements (6 months).

I also found out through my daughter that she has been seeing a guy for the last 3-4 months.  This guy has poped up several times during my 15 year marraige. Hidden emails and phone calls.

I feel like hanging myself. I caught her in March of 08 through the cell phone bill making multiple calls...almost daily calls to this guy. During the same month, I found out she had a monster.com account and had activly been looking for jobs in her home town (900 miles away).... the kicker was that the password was the guy's name.

She took my kids and left me for another man.... and it hurts so much that I wake up crying in the middle of the night..... I mean, I would never be able to trust her again, but I miss my kids so much..... oh god it hurts. I cry all the time now.

[TC]

This stuff is never easy.....

I'd recommend you go over to the Helping Each Other board.....there are a lot of people over there that are or have gone through very similiar things...I think you would find some companionship and good advice there.

Just a suggestion.

TC