Child Support Obligation

As part of the mediation process, and to calculate a child support obligation, Eric will ask each parent to complete an income/expense form to determine their gross monthly income (such as paycheck, self-employment business income, pensions, etc.) and then their net monthly income (after deducting common payroll expenses such as Federal withholding taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, and certain mandatory payroll deductions). The sum of the gross income less the deductions is known as that parent's Monthly Net Income.

During the mediation process, Eric will assist the parents to determine an appropriate and fair Time-Sharing schedule of time each parent will spend with the child(ren) each year. Based upon the total number of overnight periods the parents have agreed to in the schedule, the number is used in the State-approved formula to determine the respective percentage of time between the parents.  For example, if the parent's share time with the child(ren) on a pure 50-50 split, them each parent's respective percentage used in the formula will be 50%. Likewise, if mom/parent-1 has 280 overnights and dad/parent-2 has 85 overnights, the respective percentages used would be 77% and 23%.

Once the respective percentage of overnight periods and the respective monthly net income amounts are entered into the formula, the resulting calculation will determine the amount, if any, that the mother/parent-1 owes to the father/parent-2 and the amount, if any, that the father/parent-2 owes to the mother/parent-1.  Remember, each parent will likely owe the other parent a certain amount of money as their own child support obligation (potentially this could be different if a parent earn $0.00 per month or has a total number of overnights with the child(ren) equals 365). 

In Step 3, the formula calculated each parent's independent monthly obligation of child support owed to the other parent. In this final Step 4, Eric will calculate the net amount of child support owed.  In theory, the mother/parent-1 is required to make a monthly payment to the father/parent-2 in an amount equal to mother/parent-1's monthly child support (if any). Similarly, the father/parent-2 is required to make a monthly payment to mother/parent-1 in an amount equal to father/parent-2's monthly child support (if any).   To avoid the inconvenience of having each parent write a check or otherwise make payment each month to the other parent, a net monthly amount is calculated based upon subtracting the smaller monthly child support amount from the larger monthly amount.  This net amount is the actual payment made by one parent to the other parent.