What policies and factors determine how child support is calculated?
This is a good question and a question that many parents ask.
Every state in U.S. has child support calculation guidelines and formulae to determine which parent pays child support and how much child support that parent will pay. Each state’s child support calculation guidelines utilizes or is based upon one of three different models:
Income Shares Model
Percentage of Income Model
The Melson Formula
Under the Income Shares Model, each parent is responsible for a portion of the amount of financial support a child needs to maintain the lifestyle the child would have had the parents were not separated. The Income Shares Model relies upon knowing each parent’s to calculate the support award. The parent with the lower income of the two parents will receive a monthly child support payment from the other parent. This amount is known as the base child support award.
The Percentage of Obligor Income Model utilizes the obligor parent’s income only in calculating child support. Many (though not all) Percentage of Obligor Income guidelines assume that the support payee parent’s child-rearing costs are the same dollar amount or percentage of income as the obligor parent’s child-rearing costs. The Income Shares Model considers the incomes of both parents. The Percentage of Obligor Income Model does not factor in the custodial parent’s income in calculating the support award amount.
The Melson Formula[1] is different from the other two models. Rather than calculating child support based upon parental incomes, it first considers the basic needs of the child and each parent before determining whether and how much child support the obligor parent can and will pay.
Note: legislation, regulations, and caselaw governing child support policy and calculation change, so be sure you know both A) what your jurisdiction’s current child support guidelines are and B) how to use apply them correctly and accurately when calculating child support.
Income Shares Model
• Alabama • Arizona • Arkansas • California • Colorado • Connecticut • Florida • Georgia • Idaho • Illinois • Indiana • Iowa • Kansas • Kentucky • Louisiana • Maine • Maryland • Massachusetts • Michigan • Minnesota • Missouri • Nebraska • New Hampshire • New Jersey • New Mexico • New York • North Carolina • Ohio • Oklahoma • Oregon • Pennsylvania • Rhode Island • South Carolina • South Dakota • Tennessee • Utah • Vermont • Virginia • Washington • West Virginia • Wyoming (also • Guam • Virgin Islands)
Percentage of Income Model (this model has two variations: the Flat Percentage Model and the Varying Percentage Model)
According to the July 10, 2020 NCSL article the District of Columbia uses a hybrid model that starts as a varying percentage of income model and is then reduced by a formula based on the custodial parent’s income.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
[1] Named from the Delaware Family Court judge who articulated the formula in Dalton v. Clanton, 559 A.2d 1197 (Del. 1989).
If I can’t find an attorney, can it honestly be said I got a fair trial?
If a person seeks legal representation in a court, and every attorney they tries to hire refuses to represent them, can he receive a “fair trial”?
That depends upon how you define a “fair trial”. Some people mistakenly believe that in the United States every litigant is guaranteed representation by an attorney in any lawsuit. This is not true. Defendants in criminal cases that involve the risk of substantial jail time are entitled to appointment of counsel, free of charge to the defendant, if the defendant so desires.
In some jurisdictions, a parent is entitled to appointed counsel if the state petitions to terminate that parents parental rights.
There is no right to appointed counsel in civil cases. so there is no right to appointed counsel in divorce actions or personal injury actions or other cases that do not involve serious, jailable criminal charges. So, if you were to claim you could not find any lawyer to represent me and to help me in my civil suit, you could not claim that your rights were somehow violated. It could thus be said that you received a fair trial, even if you were unable to find a lawyer to represent you at trial.
But if the case was a complex one, and one where a knowledge of the laws and/or regulations, as well as the procedural rules of court, makes the difference between winning or losing, having no attorney to represent you, that isn’t a fair fight. unfair, but not illegal. You have no legal recourse in those circumstances.
I have met people who have claimed that they cannot find an attorney to represent them in a particular civil action. More often than not, the reasons why are fairly clear: the person seeking representation can’t afford to pay the attorney and/or the person does not have a winning legal argument (either because that person is clearly in the wrong or because that person doesn’t have enough evidence to win or to win in the manner that person desires).
Why do people need legal advisors (I’m not referring to litigators) if all the laws can be found on the Internet?
Good question, and the answer is simple and clear:
There are many times when people need legal experts (and that usually means lawyers) to advise them—even though all the laws can be found on the Internet—because even if you know where a law can be found that does not mean you know what the law means or how it applies or functions.
While some laws could be compared to instruction sheets or recipes, i.e., “If this and this happens, then that is the consequence,” other laws define terms, other laws give judges a range of and limitations to their authority (called discretion), other laws describe the elements of crimes or civil causes of action that have to be met to “win” the case.
Even if you read a particular law, rule, or regulation, there is a large legal vocabulary you would need to understand to make sense of them. Do you know what a tortfeasor is? A prima face case? An ex parte motion? A percipient witness? You get the idea.
Even if you read a particular law, rule, and/or regulation and believed you understood how the courts and government agencies apply them, your belief would not matter if the interpretation and construction of the law were declared to be something else by the Supreme Court, or by some other applicable appellate court or by the agency that is responsible for interpreting and construing rules and regulations.
Worse, the interpretation and construction of laws changes. Just look at how the meaning and application of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution have changed and developed over time. So unless you are keeping up with these developments and know where to find the current interpretations and construction (to say nothing of ensuring that laws and rules you find online weren’t repealed some time in the past but nobody bothered to update the website), you can—and should—seek the help of specialists and experts on the subject of law, its creation, its meaning, and its application.
This is why simply knowing where to find a law does not mean you would necessarily know what it means or how it applies and thus not how it affects or may affect you.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277