Hello my name is Scott Shaw founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with the divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the child support topic of, does the payer or child support also have to pay for the regular unusual extracurricular expenses of their children?
This is one of the most misunderstood areas of child support law that I come across and that the parties assume that in addition to paying child support that a party is also responsible for paying for the children’s extra curricular expenses. This is just not true. The amount of child support that is calculated which is called the presumptive amount on the child support worksheet already includes within it an amount sufficient to cover the expected and usual cost of extra curricular activities for the children. So if you agree to pay extra curricular expenses in addition to regular child support you would be paying more child support than the law requires.
In practice how this usually works out is that child support is set and the amount of child support set incorporates within it health care expenses, work or education related child care expenses all which are required by statue. However, then the parties start talking about how to divide up the extra curricular expenses for the children. But what the parties and their attorney’s don’t tell you or simply don’t know is that there’s no requirement under the law for the paying party to pay for extra curricular expenses.
In fact, agreeing to pay for your children’s extracurricular expenses is double paying. This is because the amount of child support that you’re already paying that is calculated on the child support worksheets already includes an allowance for the usual and ordinary expense of extracurricular activities. So your child support amount already includes the money that anticipates what these extracurricular expenses will cost for your children. So agreeing to paying for them in addition to child support is double paying. It’s only if the children have an extraordinary amount of extracurricular expenses.
Let’s say you have a tennis player at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Camp or some ski camp or something that any amount of extra curricular expenses should even be considered when determining child support. Now the parties are always free to pay whatever they want, pay more than the law requires and if you can do so, if you agree to. But do so with full knowledge that you are being very nice and that you are not legally require to do so.
Parties are free to always pay more child support than the law requires but if you agree to do so just do so with full knowledge. That if you are the paying party you do not have to pay for the children’s extra curricular expenses. If you wish to do so that’s a nice thing to do. But it’s not required. So don’t agree to do it in a settlement agreement and don’t allow a court to mistakenly incorporate it in a court order. This is a mistake that is all too often made and once made it is difficult to unmake this mistake. I am Scott Shaw and if you have any questions I welcome your telephone calls and inquires. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello my name is Scott Shaw founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with the divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the child support topic of, does the payer or child support also have to pay for the regular unusual extracurricular expenses of their children?
This is one of the most misunderstood areas of child support law that I come across and that the parties assume that in addition to paying child support that a party is also responsible for paying for the children’s extra curricular expenses. This is just not true. The amount of child support that is calculated which is called the presumptive amount on the child support worksheet already includes within it an amount sufficient to cover the expected and usual cost of extra curricular activities for the children. So if you agree to pay extra curricular expenses in addition to regular child support you would be paying more child support than the law requires.
In practice how this usually works out is that child support is set and the amount of child support set incorporates within it health care expenses, work or education related child care expenses all which are required by statue. However, then the parties start talking about how to divide up the extra curricular expenses for the children. But what the parties and their attorney’s don’t tell you or simply don’t know is that there’s no requirement under the law for the paying party to pay for extra curricular expenses.
In fact, agreeing to pay for your children’s extracurricular expenses is double paying. This is because the amount of child support that you’re already paying that is calculated on the child support worksheets already includes an allowance for the usual and ordinary expense of extracurricular activities. So your child support amount already includes the money that anticipates what these extracurricular expenses will cost for your children. So agreeing to paying for them in addition to child support is double paying. It’s only if the children have an extraordinary amount of extracurricular expenses.
Let’s say you have a tennis player at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Camp or some ski camp or something that any amount of extra curricular expenses should even be considered when determining child support. Now the parties are always free to pay whatever they want, pay more than the law requires and if you can do so, if you agree to. But do so with full knowledge that you are being very nice and that you are not legally require to do so.
Parties are free to always pay more child support than the law requires but if you agree to do so just do so with full knowledge. That if you are the paying party you do not have to pay for the children’s extra curricular expenses. If you wish to do so that’s a nice thing to do. But it’s not required. So don’t agree to do it in a settlement agreement and don’t allow a court to mistakenly incorporate it in a court order. This is a mistake that is all too often made and once made it is difficult to unmake this mistake. I am Scott Shaw and if you have any questions I welcome your telephone calls and inquires. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello my name Scott Shaw founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm, LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing does it matter how much your spouse or significant other make for purposes of determining child support?
This question applies whether you will be the party paying support or the party receiving support. As the answer is the same for both sides. This is the most common questions I’m asked and the answer is with the caveat that was discussed below, no. A Georgia Supreme Court made this clear in it’s recent BLUMENSHINE v. HALL decision. What the court specifically stated without ambiguity is that the trial court could not consider the income of the father’s new wife when determining father’s child support obligation. This is because father’s new wife had no legal obligation to support father’s children from a prior marriage. It is hard to be clearer. Only the payer of child support has an obligation to pay child support and any person the payer of child support lives with, even if it is his or her new wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other they have no legal obligation to support this children. Since that person has no legal obligation to support this other person’s children that person’s income is utterly not relevant for purposes of calculating child support. This is true even if you marry a millionaire.
Say Donald Trump. Your rich spouse’s income will not be taken into consideration in determining you child support obligation. That does not mean that your rich spouse is irrelevant to the case but just that his or her income will not be considered in setting the child support amount. Having a rich spouse is relevant however for multiple reasons.
For example, if you decide not to work because your spouse earns enough money so yo don’t have to work or you voluntarily take a lower paying work than you are capable of because you just don’t need the money. In such a case the court can impute income to you in the amount that you would earn if you had to work to support yourself and your children. Your rich spouse may also be paying for your living expenses. Like your house, car, groceries, clothes et cetera. In such a case the fact that you do not incur these expenses can be used to try to justify an upward deviation of child support.
There are other exceptions that I can think of arguing as well. But in the end no matter how much money you husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other makes it would be utterly irrelevant in determining the amount of child support that the court orders. This is true whether or not you are the paying party or the party receiving child support. This rule is so prominent that at Shaw Law Firm we even object to any discover request regarding our client’s spouse’s income. Your spouse’s income is irrelevant and not the other parties business and we will object to any discovery to those documents. I am Scott Shaw and if you have any questions about this I welcome your telephone calls and inquires. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello my name Scott Shaw founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm, LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing does it matter how much your spouse or significant other make for purposes of determining child support?
This question applies whether you will be the party paying support or the party receiving support. As the answer is the same for both sides. This is the most common questions I’m asked and the answer is with the caveat that was discussed below, no. A Georgia Supreme Court made this clear in it’s recent BLUMENSHINE v. HALL decision. What the court specifically stated without ambiguity is that the trial court could not consider the income of the father’s new wife when determining father’s child support obligation. This is because father’s new wife had no legal obligation to support father’s children from a prior marriage. It is hard to be clearer. Only the payer of child support has an obligation to pay child support and any person the payer of child support lives with, even if it is his or her new wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other they have no legal obligation to support this children. Since that person has no legal obligation to support this other person’s children that person’s income is utterly not relevant for purposes of calculating child support. This is true even if you marry a millionaire.
Say Donald Trump. Your rich spouse’s income will not be taken into consideration in determining you child support obligation. That does not mean that your rich spouse is irrelevant to the case but just that his or her income will not be considered in setting the child support amount. Having a rich spouse is relevant however for multiple reasons.
For example, if you decide not to work because your spouse earns enough money so yo don’t have to work or you voluntarily take a lower paying work than you are capable of because you just don’t need the money. In such a case the court can impute income to you in the amount that you would earn if you had to work to support yourself and your children. Your rich spouse may also be paying for your living expenses. Like your house, car, groceries, clothes et cetera. In such a case the fact that you do not incur these expenses can be used to try to justify an upward deviation of child support.
There are other exceptions that I can think of arguing as well. But in the end no matter how much money you husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other makes it would be utterly irrelevant in determining the amount of child support that the court orders. This is true whether or not you are the paying party or the party receiving child support. This rule is so prominent that at Shaw Law Firm we even object to any discover request regarding our client’s spouse’s income. Your spouse’s income is irrelevant and not the other parties business and we will object to any discovery to those documents. I am Scott Shaw and if you have any questions about this I welcome your telephone calls and inquires. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello. My name is Scott Shaw, founder and principle of Shaw Law Firm LLC, a law firm I founded in 1995. Shaw custody, along with divorce and other areas of family law, are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the topic of agreeing to pay for your children’s college education.
This is a topic that people reflexively agree to do to be nice. It’s also one of the biggest legal mistakes that can be made in divorce and child custody matters. I am by no means stating that you should not support your kids through school. Yes, by all means do so, but don’t really bind yourself to do so unless you get something in return. Let me explain further. A Georgia trial court has absolutely no power to order any parent to pay for their adult children’s college education. None. Zero. The only way the court obtains this power is if you voluntarily give it to the court by agreeing to pay for your children’s college expenses in a settlement agreement that gets entered in a court’s order. And why would you want to give any court more power over you than the law allows to begin with?
One of the biggest and most costly mistakes I have ever seen a party make in regard to a child’s support in a divorce case, is agreeing, in a settlement agreement, to pay for the college expenses of each of his six children as part of his child support. I was retained to try to get this client out of this horrendous deal he had made. To make matters worse, in doing so in his agreement, he put no limits on the expenses. He had no time limit.
So, for example, what if a child suddenly decided to go to college at age thirty, or decided to stay in college for six or more years, and he put no limit on expenses? So, for example, what if the child chose to go to Harvard, or any of the various $40,000 plus per year schools, plus room and board? To make matters even worse, this man only made $96,000 per year. And sure enough, his kids started going to college, with one child choosing a university in the state of Nebraska that was one of the most expensive schools in America. In this particular case, the father also became estranged from his children. They openly mocked him, but nevertheless, that was not legal reason to not pay as he agreed to pay for their college expenses.
Do not let this happen to you. As child support, a court in the state of Georgia absolutely does not have the power to order you to pay for your children’s college education. Not a single penny’s worth. The only way a court gains this power is if you agree to pay for your children’s college in a settlement agreement. For the most part, since you can voluntarily pay for your children’s college education any way, and you don’t need to have it made into a court order to do what you voluntarily want to do any way, why give the court this power over you? In most cases, there is absolutely no good reason to do so. So just don’t do it.
However, there are exceptions to this rule. The biggest exception is if you get something in return for agreeing to pay for your children’s college education. A very common reason is that you were going to pay any way for the expense, but you get your spouse to agree to pay their fair share as well. So, for example, if you were going to pay 100% any way, but if you can get the other parent to promise in a settlement agreement to pay for 25 or 50% of the cost themselves, it puts the other parent’s skin in the game in regard to how much college will cost, and will save you money. Because now what you were going to pay 100%, your spouse is going to help you with. If you do decide to contribute to your children’s college expenses, and incorporate that into a legally binding obligation as additional child support, and you were doing so only because you were getting something in return for it, then you also have to draw up this provision properly and place specific limits on the terms of what you will pay for, how much you will pay, and for how long.
Do not let happen to you what happened to the father I opened this video with. Unless you voluntarily agree to do so in a settlement agreement, the court cannot order you do anything in regard to your children’s college education. And except in exceptional circumstances where you can gain an advantage, just never agree to do so. And if you do agree to do so, make sure, for God’s sake, that the provision is drafted properly. My name is Scott Shaw. If you have any questions or inquiries regarding this matter, I’d be happy to take them. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello. My name is Scott Shaw, founder and principle of Shaw Law Firm LLC, a law firm I founded in 1995. Shaw custody, along with divorce and other areas of family law, are our only area of legal practice. We do not accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the topic of agreeing to pay for your children’s college education.
This is a topic that people reflexively agree to do to be nice. It’s also one of the biggest legal mistakes that can be made in divorce and child custody matters. I am by no means stating that you should not support your kids through school. Yes, by all means do so, but don’t really bind yourself to do so unless you get something in return. Let me explain further. A Georgia trial court has absolutely no power to order any parent to pay for their adult children’s college education. None. Zero. The only way the court obtains this power is if you voluntarily give it to the court by agreeing to pay for your children’s college expenses in a settlement agreement that gets entered in a court’s order. And why would you want to give any court more power over you than the law allows to begin with?
One of the biggest and most costly mistakes I have ever seen a party make in regard to a child’s support in a divorce case, is agreeing, in a settlement agreement, to pay for the college expenses of each of his six children as part of his child support. I was retained to try to get this client out of this horrendous deal he had made. To make matters worse, in doing so in his agreement, he put no limits on the expenses. He had no time limit.
So, for example, what if a child suddenly decided to go to college at age thirty, or decided to stay in college for six or more years, and he put no limit on expenses? So, for example, what if the child chose to go to Harvard, or any of the various $40,000 plus per year schools, plus room and board? To make matters even worse, this man only made $96,000 per year. And sure enough, his kids started going to college, with one child choosing a university in the state of Nebraska that was one of the most expensive schools in America. In this particular case, the father also became estranged from his children. They openly mocked him, but nevertheless, that was not legal reason to not pay as he agreed to pay for their college expenses.
Do not let this happen to you. As child support, a court in the state of Georgia absolutely does not have the power to order you to pay for your children’s college education. Not a single penny’s worth. The only way a court gains this power is if you agree to pay for your children’s college in a settlement agreement. For the most part, since you can voluntarily pay for your children’s college education any way, and you don’t need to have it made into a court order to do what you voluntarily want to do any way, why give the court this power over you? In most cases, there is absolutely no good reason to do so. So just don’t do it.
However, there are exceptions to this rule. The biggest exception is if you get something in return for agreeing to pay for your children’s college education. A very common reason is that you were going to pay any way for the expense, but you get your spouse to agree to pay their fair share as well. So, for example, if you were going to pay 100% any way, but if you can get the other parent to promise in a settlement agreement to pay for 25 or 50% of the cost themselves, it puts the other parent’s skin in the game in regard to how much college will cost, and will save you money. Because now what you were going to pay 100%, your spouse is going to help you with. If you do decide to contribute to your children’s college expenses, and incorporate that into a legally binding obligation as additional child support, and you were doing so only because you were getting something in return for it, then you also have to draw up this provision properly and place specific limits on the terms of what you will pay for, how much you will pay, and for how long.
Do not let happen to you what happened to the father I opened this video with. Unless you voluntarily agree to do so in a settlement agreement, the court cannot order you do anything in regard to your children’s college education. And except in exceptional circumstances where you can gain an advantage, just never agree to do so. And if you do agree to do so, make sure, for God’s sake, that the provision is drafted properly. My name is Scott Shaw. If you have any questions or inquiries regarding this matter, I’d be happy to take them. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
A Judge Can Order a Parent to Attend Counseling in Arizona
A Judge Orders a Parent to Attend Domestic Violence Counseling in Arizona Can a judge order a parent in a child custody…
Read MoreArizona Dissolution of Marriage
In divorce, many issues require a resolution. Those issues can be resolved either by you or by the court before you can…
Read More
