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| Parents - Paying Child Maintenance | | Date Added: June 22, 2010 05:01:52 PM |
| Both the mother and the father are legally obliged to support their children in accordance with their ability to do so. Commonly, jurisdictions have establish child support guidelines, which provide a formula for calculating child maintenance grounded on a proportion of gross income earned by each parent.
During a marriage or committed relationship, such issues are seldom a concern for the court. But when parents end their marriage or live separately from their children, the court commonly obliges a non-custodial parent to pay child support to a custodial parent. This issue can be settled out of court or by arguing about it in court. Child support payments, like alimony, may be incorporated into the divorce judgment or may be determined in a marital separation agreement. This contested issue can be avoided, providing both the mother and the father agree to the appropriate sum of child maintenance and make it part of a marital separation agreement.
If a non-custodial parent has other legal obligations, they will also be taken into account in deciding on child support. For example, if the non-custodial parent is paying child maintenance from a previous relationship, the court will take that responsibility into consideration. Living expenses, including rent and food will also be taken into account by the court. Nevertheless, the court will not decrease child maintenance payments to make it easier for the parent to pay discretionary obligations. For example, a parent cannot give money away for charity or purchase an expensive motor vehicle at the expense of supporting his or her own children.
To assist the court in deciding on the appropriate amount of child support, both parties will be required by the court to prepare a financial declaration that is signed under penalty of perjury. Each parent will be required to provide full information on their income, property holdings, such as bank accounts, investments and real property and their financial obligations. The court will rely heavily on these documents in making the order and, hence, it is in the children's best interests that the required documents be filled in completely and honestly.
Parents who deliberately avoid paying child support will be punished. If the custodial parent files a complaint to the district attorney's office, the nonpaying parent can be taken to court |
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