Divorce, Family, and Matrimonial Lawyers – Darien, CT
CHILD SUPPORT
New Canaan, CT | Darien, CT | Greenwich, CT | Stamford, CT | Westport, CT
The court must consider the parties’ respective financial abilities and the needs of the child. Child support, like alimony, is subject to modification if financial circumstances substantially change. Unlike alimony, the parties cannot bargain away the court’s power to modify child support.
The age of eighteen is the age of majority in Connecticut. The court cannot enter an order which requires a parent to support or educate the child beyond the age of eighteen years unless a written agreement exists which provides for the payment of support or education beyond the child's eighteenth birthday.
An exception to this law exists for a situation where a child reaches the age of eighteen while still a full-time high school student, in which case the parents are responsible for child support until the child either completes high school or reaches the age of nineteen, whichever occurs first. The court can also order that child support be paid beyond the age of eighteen for children with mental or physical disabilities, which are defined by law.
As a result of federal law, in 1987, the judges of the Connecticut Superior Court adopted child support guidelines. Those guidelines became presumptive October 1, 1989. The current child support guidelines became effective July 1, 2015. As a result, there is a rebuttable presumption that the amount of child support which results from the application of the guidelines is the amount of support to be ordered. Nonetheless, the guidelines are not intended to preclude consideration of other factors. The child support guidelines are to be considered in addition to, and not instead of, the criteria in the child support statutes.
Other factors to be considered in conjunction with the guidelines are:
- Age
- Health
- Station
- Occupation
- Earning capacity
- Amount and sources of income
- Estate
- Vocational skills and employability of each of the parents
- Estate and needs of the child
The guidelines are not to be mechanistically applied, and the amount of support determined under the child support guidelines schedule should not be blindly accepted. You and your spouse can agree, or a judge can find at trial, that application of the child support guidelines would be inequitable or inappropriate under the circumstances of your particular case.
The following are criteria for deviating from the child support guidelines:
- Parent’s other financial resources, i.e., financial resources that are not included in the definition of net income, but that could be used for the child or for meeting the parent's needs, such as:
- Substantial assets
- Parent’s earning capacity
- Parental support provided to a minor obligor
- Recurring gifts of a spouse or domestic partner
- Employment over 45 hours per week
- Extraordinary parental expenses, meaning necessary expenses for the parent that are not permissible deductions from gross income, including:
- Significant visitation expenses
- Unreimbursed employment expenses
- Unreimbursed medical/disability expenses
- Coordination of total family support
- Division of assets and liabilities
- Provision of alimony
- Tax planning considerations
- Extraordinary expenses for child
- Education expenses
- Unreimbursed medical expenses
- Special needs
- Needs of parent’s other dependents
- Resources available to qualified child
- Childcare expenses for qualified child
- Verified support for non-resident child
- Significant and essential needs of a spouse
- Special circumstances
- Shared physical custody
- Extraordinary disparity in parental income
- Best interests of the child
- Total award exceeds 55% of the obligor’s net
- Other equitable factors
The guidelines suggest that alimony be computed after child support. This presents the paradox of a non-custodial parent paying child support based upon a weekly disposable income that does not exist. In other words, the alimony payments will reduce the non-custodial parent's weekly disposable income, but under the guidelines worksheet, child support will be determined as if no alimony were paid. For purposes of the child support guidelines, alimony only becomes a factor in determining each parent's responsibility for payment of a percentage of the unreimbursed medical expenses.
Recent Connecticut Supreme Court cases interpreting the application of the guidelines to combined net weekly incomes above $4,000 have made this a changing and challenging area of family law.