Child Support
When parents dissolve their marriage the courts want to ensure the children will have the needed financial support.
The parents can simply agree upon child support or the courts can order it. If the courts decide how much money, if any, each parent must pay for the child’s support, it looks at a variety of factors to determine how much should be paid. Factors such as the number of children in the family, the income of both parents, and the breakdown of how much time the child will spend with each parent. The information needed to determine child support may seem straightforward but determining the appropriate child support is far from simple. Child support is owed until the children reach eighteen years of age and sometimes even beyond that time frame. So the ruling can have a significant long-term impact on the parent paying the support.
There may be a need for an increase or a decrease in child support payments throughout the child’s upbringing. If the support is not paid there are legal remedies that can be used to collect the money.