Paying Fair Child Support for Your Child Custody Situation

Paying child support can bring up a lot of conflicted feelings for a parent. Except for the obvious few parents who show complete disregard for their children--fathers who refuse to pay a cent of child support, mothers who run off without leaving any information behind--the majority of parents want to do what is best for their child. So, a non-custodial parent wants to pay child support to support their children, but they also don't have a lot of money to spare. When the time comes to pay they want to do their part without resenting the loss of money, but they probably can't help but wonder if the other parent really needs all that money.

The first thing you need to do when dealing with paying child support is calculate the amount you should be paying. This way you will have the peace of mind knowing that you aren't paying more or less than what you should. Most states calculate child support based on the time each parent has with the child. So, if you are the non-custodial parent, you pay for the extra time your spouse has with the child. They generally calculate the percentage of time each parent has with the child and base the child support payments off of that. In order for you to know how much child support you should be paying, you need to calculate the time you are spending with your child. Add up the hours you and your ex spend with the child. There are also various computer software programs that will keep track of this--you put in your child custody schedule and it gives you the percentage of time with your child.

Once you've figured out the base of what you're paying, you may want to change that figure. The best way to lessen the amount of child support you pay is to spend more time with your child. Look at your child custody schedule. Can you add a few hours here and there? Maybe you'd like to schedule an extra week of vacation with your child. Work in a few hours here and there and get that approved by your ex. You can probably come up with a plan that won't drastically decrease her time with the kids, but it can up your percentage so you have more time with the kids and decrease your child support payments. Again, a child custody software can make this very easy to do. You can add a few hours here and there and the computer will recalculate everything for you.

Another thing to consider is how you are counting the time that your child isn't with either parent, ie school. Is this time automatically going under your spouse's time? If it is, you are paying child support on that time. This isn't exactly fair because your spouse isn't supporting the child--the school is. Come up with a schedule that gives you some of the school hours as your custody. This will increase your percentage time with your child and decrease your payment.

It does make sense that a non custodial parent pay child support to the custodial parent. And, parents should want to do what is best for their child and help them in any way they can. However, child support payments should also be fair and not debilitate the non-custodial parent. It's important to make sure that you're paying the fair amount.

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Comments

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 at 1:02 AM, by Ex-fathers
Paying the abductor of your child simply ensures the continued loss of the child. No one should be compelled to pay for a baby sitter he neither wants or needs.
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