My Ex-wife Is Married. Should Her and Her New Husband’s Total Household Income Be Used When Determining Child Support?
I really don’t understand why this question gets asked, and it is asked frequently. Actually, that’s not true. I do know why.
The people who usually ask this question are child support obligors (payors) who are suffering under the burden of their child support obligation. They resent having to pay so much child support, or even any child support of all. Frankly, I sympathize. Often, child support is calculated incorrectly, based upon an income that the child support obligor does not earn and never did earn. Sometimes child support is based upon the obligee falsely reporting his/her income is much lower than it really is. Other times, child support is based upon an award of child custody that is unfair to parent and child alike.
And so there are many discouraged child support obligors who become obsessed with finding a way to pay less or no child support. This obsession clouds their judgment. They begin to see “reasons” for reducing or eliminating the child support obligations that make no sense. One of these so-called reasons (that isn’t really a reason) is when the child support obligee remarries. The thinking goes in the minds of these hapless child support obligors that the remarried parent now has a new income source in the form of the income of the new spouse’s income. The problem with this argument is that while the parent may have a new spouse, that new spouse is a stepparent to the child, not that child’s parent. The child still has only two parents who are financially responsible for that child’s support. Stepparents do not have an obligation to support their stepchildren in Utah. And that is why parents who remarry do not have their spouses’ incomes included in their own incomes for child support calculation purposes in Utah.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Tags: Child Support, child support calculation, child support modification