Reduce child support or at least reduce the consequences of failure to pay

The St. Petersburg Times reports today that filings to reduce child support in the Tampa courthouse almost doubled between 2005 and 2008 (the 2009 numbers aren't in yet).  In the St. Petersburg/Clearwater courthouses, the number of filings tripled, and in the county north of Clearwater, the filing went up fivefold.  The state's collection rate in that time period went down from 72% to 67% in that same time period.

Nothing about this is surprising.  I've seen articles about this happening in cities throughout the country for at least a year.  A more interesting statistic might be how much collection case filings have increased.  The saddest thing is that, when a payor falls behind by more than $2500, that payor's driver's license could be suspended.  Then, of course, as the article mentions, the payor can't get to work or find a new job, and child support falls further behind.

It's possible that this can be avoided, or at least the consequences of failing to pay can be reduced.

Too many payors wait until they fall behind or receive a notice of enforcement or contempt before they do anything.  By then, it's usually too late.  Immediately upon a pay reduction or job loss, a payor should seek modification of child support.  Child support can even be abated (temporarily stopped) when a job loss occurs in certain situations.

So, the trick is not to wait.  Call a lawyer (you've heard me say this a million times) right away when your job situation changes.  Don't wait until it's too late.  A jail cell is a bad place to negotiate your case from, especially when child support should have been adjusted long ago when the job loss occurred.

Is Florida a 50/50 custody state?

A couple of years ago Florida changed its statute on custody. Everybody thought the reason for the change was to make Florida a 50-50 custody state. That wasn't the reason for the change at all. Actually, the reason for the change was pretty simple.
In Florida, too many people have never understand the law on how kids are to be raised by unmarried parents. Parents with primary custody often like authoritarians. They think that, just because they have "primary custody," they are in complete control of the kids. They say things like, "I have primary custody, therefore you have no say in where the kids go to school." They try to tell the noncustodial parent that they can't show up for doctor visits, or that they can control what the kids did on the noncustodial parent's time.

This wasn't the law at all, either before the statute changed or after. This was never the law. So the statute was changed to make it clearer that this wasn't the law. The statute was changed to use words like "timeshare" instead of "custody." This change was so that people would understand that one parent has no more control over the kids than the other divorced parent.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. So many people expected the statute to change into a 50-50 statute that it actually changed into a 50-50 statute, at least in some places.

In Florida, it seems things are changing. Despite the fact that not one word of that statute changed to turn Florida into a 50-50 state, strangely, Florida is slowly becoming a 50-50 state. In many parts of Florida, judges are deciding that 50-50 is the better custody choice for parents. Surprisingly, what everyone thought was going to happen with the new statute, but didn't, actually did. Weird.

Calculating child support in Florida - Step by Step

Calculating child support in Florida is pretty easy, especially with some of the online tools available.  Here's a step-by-step guide to help you calculate your own support:

1. Calculate your net incomes


The first step in figuring out Florida child support is to calculate the net incomes of both parents. This is easy if you've both completed financial affidavits: it will be on page two. If you haven't completed the affidavits yet, you'll have to figure it out yourself. But that's pretty easy. The best way is to look on a pay stub. Net income is your after-tax income. Since you're probably not paid on a monthly basis, you'll have to do a little math. Everything on the child support guidelines in Florida is done on a monthly basis. If you're paid weekly, look at your weekly net (after tax) income and multiply it by 4.33. If you're paid twice a month, look at your after-tax income on your pay stub and multiply the amount by 2.15. Don't forget to include bonuses and average overtime in your net income. It all counts under Florida law! If you are self-employed or you don't have a pay stub, you can use last year's total net income from your tax return and divide it by 12.



2. Determine childcare and health insurance amounts, if any

The second thing to know is how much childcare and health insurance costs. It doesn't matter who pays it. We'll get to that later. Just know that these two amounts--if they exist in your case--get calculated into child support. Remember also that you'll have to know these as monthly amounts. So if, for instance, daycare gets paid weekly, you'll have to multiply the amount by 4.33 to figure out what the monthly childcare cost is. Some things count as childcare and some things don't. The law says a childcare is a childcare if it is the "equivalent of a daycare." After school karate class where the kids are taken when school ends counts as childcare under the law. It would be the "equivalent of a daycare." Babysitting by grandma doesn't count. That's not daycare, even if grandma gets paid.



3. Determine your amount of timeshare (visitation)

If one of the parents has more than 40% of the overnights (about 146 overnights in a calendar year), then the guidelines change substantially, and the amount of money paid by the minority timeshare (noncustodial) parent to the majority timeshare (custodial) parent decreases significantly. If the minority timeshare parent has the child or children more than 40% of the overnights in the calendar year, determine what the percentage will be. For instance, as said before, 146 nights is a 40% timeshare. In a standard "week on/week off" schedule, each parent would have the kids for 50% of the timeshare. You must determine the exact percentage if the percentage will be 40% or over.



4. Calculate the amount of support

Once you know all the numbers from the steps above, you are ready to calculate the guidelines child support. Actually, this is the easy part. There are two ways to do this:

a) Download the free form 12.902(e) from www.flcourts.org. Plug in all the numbers we've calculated in steps 1-3 and insert them into the proper boxes in the form. Follow the instructions and use the included grid to find the child support amount. If step three above didn't apply to you, then skip lines 10 through 21 on the form.

OR

b) Hate math? No problem. The same form that you can download in part a above is available for free in a fillable pdf online and it does all the math for you! You plug in the same numbers that we got in steps 1 through 3 above and it tells you what your child support is without you breaking out a single calculator or slide-rule! You can find many online versions of the calculator, but the one I prefer is made by the judges in Tampa. It can be found at www.fljud13.org.