How to Reduce Your Child Support Obligations

Divorce Lawyer

Do not think less of yourself if you ever need to reduce your child support payments. If you lose your job or have to change careers into something that pays less, you may not have the money to continue the child support payments that you used to pay. In some instances, your case may have been handled the wrong way from the beginning and you should have had lower payments. If you are above and beyond the child support guidelines, then there is usually a way that you can cut back on those payments. Here are some ways to reduce your monthly child support payments.

Review Your Order

The first step that you should take is to review the child support order. You can look it over with a family lawyer for any inconsistencies and also compare it to how you think the order should be. Look at the expenses that your child needed before versus what the child needs now. For instance, if he or she no longer attends daycare, that is an expense that does not need to be listed. Make sure everything is up to date.

Provide Health Care

If you provide healthcare to your child, you can typically subtract that from what you pay per month. Your child must have healthcare. While this can work for certain benefits, it does not always work for gifts or large purchases that you make for your children. There can be exceptions, particularly if you speak with your child’s other parent about being paid less money because you purchased a gift or spent money on extracurricular activities for your child. However, this is uncommon and you will still want to go through the courts because you cannot pay less than your court-ordered support.

Consider Lower Daycare Costs

If your child is in daycare, you may want to look into a lower cost daycare. Your child support order does consider daycare. You could be paying too much for daycare. If you have 75 percent of the income, you also pay 75 percent of the daycare fees. Consider how much you spend when you are deciding on what daycare to send your child to.

Child support can be a complex issue. If you are thinking about reducing your payments, it is best to speak with a lawyer in advance. He or she can analyze your case and help you make the right moves going forward.