The divorce is finalized. You and your former spouse have everything figured out. Primary custody is taken care of. You’ve also addressed the essential factors in child support calculations. You feel like there’s nothing else to do and you’re ready to get on with your life.
However, life doesn’t always move smoothly and the unexpected can always happen in an instant. When something does directly affect your child, your current support payments that are coming in may not be enough. So, what happens if you need to ask your spouse to increase their child support payments?
How Child Support is Calculated
Several factors go into calculating child support payment amounts. In other words, it’s a little more complicated than deciding on what seems like a fair number. Some of these factors include:
- How parenting time is shared
- The number of children
- The incomes of the parents
- The other required expenses of the paying parent
- The age of the children
- The costs of insurance and who pays for insurance
- Monthly childcare costs
- Extraordinary expenses
A quick note about extraordinary expenses. These typically don’t include things like private school costs or expensive activities.
Deciding whether your child is going to play a particular sport may not always be covered by support payments. You may be able to work out an agreement with your former spouse. If not, the judge may not include everything you want in the amount you receive in child support.
Options for Increasing Child Support Payments
Children at any age can be expensive to raise. From food and clothing to covering expenses for extracurricular activities, the costs can quickly add up.
Your current child support payments may not be enough to keep up. This probably leaves you wondering if there’s a way to increase the amount on your child support payments. Thankfully, you have a few options.
Talk to Your Former Spouse
Hopefully, you still have a pretty decent relationship with your former partner. You may not be best friends but you can have civil conversations about your shared child/children.
Schedule a meeting with your child’s other parent. The meeting doesn’t need to be in person. A phone call or online meeting can work just fine. You probably want to avoid texts and emails. This is a conversation best held orally.
Talk to your spouse about your child’s growing and changing needs. Maybe you need a little more each month to keep up with clothing or food costs. If your child develops a medical condition, you may need additional help covering these expenses.
If you and your former partner can work out a new child support agreement, all that’s left is to file the amendment with the court. Yes, a family court judge must sign off on any changes you or your spouse make to the original agreement.
Modify Child Support Payment Amounts
Even though you probably can’t force your former partner to pay for everything relating to your shared child, life can quickly change. When this happens, the original child support agreement may not be enough.
If you can’t reach an agreement with the child’s other parent, you may need to go back to family court. This is also when it’s a good time to talk to an experienced child support attorney. The legal process can be complex, even if you’re only trying to modify child support payments.
You can’t ask the court to modify child support payments to fund things like vacations or other extracurricular activities. However, if your child develops a serious medical condition the court may decide to increase payment amounts. This can also be true if you lose your job.
If you’re not receiving alimony, a judge may temporarily increase child support payment amounts. The increase works to ensure the child’s needs are still being met.
The increase in support can be temporary or a permanent adjustment. If the increase is due to your job loss, it’s often temporary. Once you start receiving a paycheck the child support payment amount usually goes back to the original agreement. If the increase is to cover ongoing medical expenses, the bump in child support amounts can be permanent.
Taking Care of Your Child’s Needs
Child support has a primary use. The checks should always go towards meeting your child’s needs. When the payment amount isn’t enough to cover all of your shared child’s expenses, it may be time to have a conversation with your former spouse.
Hopefully, you can reach an agreement with the other party—if not, it may be time for you to file an appeal in your local family court. While there’s no actual guarantee that child support payments will actually increase, it’s still worth a try to see if it’s possible.
