One of the many things you must think about and plan for when you get divorced is how your children will be supported once you are no longer married. Custody arrangements can vary, but your child will probably be dividing their time between both parents, which means the costs associated with raising the child will fall on the parent who the child spends the most time with. When this happens, child support is awarded and paid by the non-residential parent to the residential parent. This financial help ensures the child is receiving the standard of living he or she deserves.

Determining Eligibility For Payments

According to Ohio law, any court that issues a shared parenting order will also issue an order of child support, which requires a parent to make support payments. Ohio has a formula and table that is used to determine the amount of child support that will be paid. The law says these methods will be used to determine child support obligations, unless there are “extraordinary circumstances of the parents” that would cause the payments to not be in the best interests of the child. These circumstances may include:

The amount of time the child spends with each parent;
The ability of each parent to maintain adequate housing for the child;
Each parent’s expenses, including child care, school tuition, medical expenses, and dental expenses; and
Any other circumstance that the court deems relevant.

The laws also state that formulas for child support payments only apply to parents whose combined income is more than $6,600 or less than $150,000 annually.

How Support Is Calculated

In Ohio, the parents’ combined annual income and the number of children being supported are the two major determining factors in the amount of child support that will be paid. Certain deductions can be taken from each parent’s income before it is used to calculate payments. These can include:

The amount of local income tax paid;
Any child or spousal support orders for other children or prior spouses; or
Federal dependency exemptions for dependents of the household.

The adjusted gross income is then applied to a chart that uses the combined income and the number of children for which support is ordered. The chart will specify the yearly support amount required for the children. Then, the support payment will be calculated according to the percentage of the total income that the payor makes. For example, if the mother earns $30,000 per year and the father earns $60,000 per year, the combined income is $90,000. If the couple had two children, this means that the total amount of support required to raise both children each year is $15,335, according to the chart. Since the father makes two-thirds of the combined income, he will pay two-thirds of the support obligation, meaning he will be required to pay roughly $10,223 of support each year for his children.

Do you have to pay child support with 50 / 50 custody in Ohio?

Get Help From a Medina Divorce Lawyer

Calculating child support can be tricky–there are many factors to consider, and the laws can be difficult to understand. If you are in the process of figuring out the appropriate amount of child support for your children, you can greatly benefit from the help of a Brunswick child support attorney. The lawyers at Erb Legal LLC can help you make the right determination and enforce your support orders. Call our office to schedule a free consultation.

Sources:
http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3119

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