Child Support in Florida - What is the Fight About? Part 1
If you are a parent about to get a divorce, Florida's Child Support Guidelines take the mystery out of "how" child support is calculated. What follows is a simplified explanation meant as an overview and not an exhaustive treatment on calculating child support; it may provide you a starting point in becoming informed about the issue.
Child support in Florida is established in Section 61.30, of the Florida Statutes. The Statute provides a framework, or Guidelines, to determine the financial obligation each parent has to their child or children. First, it provides a formula for arriving at your gross income by providing a list of what income will be taken into account. It also provides a list of acceptable deductions from that income. The result is your net income for purposes of child support. The calculation is performed on both parents' income.
Second, both parents' net income is combined. This global net income amount is used to determine both parties' support obligation-not the individual obligation of each parent-according to the number of children they have in common using a table incorporated in the statute. The resulting amount is the basic child support obligation of both parents.
Additional support for day care, health insurance and uncovered medical expenses for the child are then taken into account, if applicable. Any such amounts are then added to the basic support. (Note: for purposes of the cost of day care, only 75% of the total cost is used in this step).
The third step involves a calculation to determine what percentage of your income-and the other parent's income-makes up the global net income amount. The percentage for each parent is then applied to the basic child support obligation determined by the table in the first step, above; and is also applied to any amount spent on day care, health insurance, etc. Your individual child support obligation is the result of multiplying your percentage by the basic amount and the other items (day care, health, etc).
The process is the same when it comes time to modify child support, except that the Statute provides that any proposed change to the amount of support needs to meet a certain minimum amount or percentage before support is raised or lowered.
So, if parents have an obligation to support their children and there is a formula to calculate it, what is the fight about? See part 2 of this article.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Added: September 14, 2008
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