Does Changing Your Parenting Plan Affect Your Child Support Obligations?
The possibilities are endless when it comes to customizing your parenting plan, but no matter how carefully you craft your unique parenting plan to suit your unique family, life brings plenty of surprises. You might need to change your parenting plan because of changes to your work or family obligations, or even because your children get older and you need a parenting plan that accommodates their education and extracurricular activities. Many families officially change their parenting plans at least once between the time the divorce becomes final and the youngest child’s 18th birthday. In addition to these, others make minor adjustments, such as having Dad pick up the kids from school on Friday afternoon instead of picking them up from Mom’s house on Friday after dinner. Child support obligations are calculated based on statewide guidelines; the numbers that the court plugs into the formula are based on each parent’s parenting time, income, and expenses. A Birmingham child support lawyer can help you increase your parenting time or decrease your child support.
Parenting Plan Changes That Require a Modification of Child Support
If you make a major change to your parenting plan, you must modify the child support to match. For example, if one parent moves out of states, the parenting plan will require a major overhaul, because the children’s stays with the out-of-state parent will be longer and less frequent, and the parenting plan will assign responsibility for transporting the children by airplane or road trip. The court will issue a new child support order to match. Likewise, if you change your co-parenting schedule from 2-2-3-2-2-3 to weekdays with Mom and weekends with Dad, as many families do when children enter school, your child support obligations must also change. In other words, changing each parent’s share of parenting time requires a change to the child support order.
Parenting Plan Changes That Do Not Require a Modification of Child Support
Not all parenting plan changes affect the division of parenting time. For example, one parent might get a new job with employer-provided insurance for the children; the parents might change the parenting plan to give this parent the final say on non-emergency medical care decisions. You also do not need to modify your child support order if Dad’s weekend parenting time changes from Friday evening until Sunday evening to Saturday morning until Monday morning because of a change to his work schedule, because his number of overnights with the children does not change.
What If Your Parenting Time Is Fine, but Your Child Support Is Unaffordable?
There are other ways to decrease your child support obligations besides modifying your parenting plan. You can also decrease your child support obligations by demonstrating to the court that you have experienced an involuntary reduction in income.
Contact Peeples Law About Reducing Your Child Support Obligations
A Birmingham family law attorney can help you modify your child support order to something more affordable. Contact Peeples Law today to schedule a consultation.
Source:
dhr.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Child-Support-A-Guide-to-Services-in-Alabama.pdf
