Understanding Child Support Modification
Are you looking at a child support modification and you’re just not sure what to talk about? My name is Carl Birkhead. I’m a child support attorney with Wirth Law Office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ve been doing family and criminal law for about seven years now. I want to help you to make law easy by telling you a little bit about child support, and if you’re trying to modify it, let’s go through what we need to talk about.
Initial Steps in Child Support Modification
So, here’s the deal. If I have someone who’s coming to meet with me, and we’re going to talk about child support modification, here’s what I do as an attorney. First, I’m going to go and I’m going to look up your case. Whether it’s a divorce or a paternity action, I’m going to go on OSCN, I’m going to pull the paperwork, and I want to review exactly what was in the last order that established child support.
Sometimes, some counties don’t have those documents available. So, if for whatever reason I’m not able to find those orders, go ahead and bring me the last court order that you had that addresses child support, so that way we can go over it together whenever you sit down in my office.
Reasons for Modification
The second thing I want to know is, why are we modifying it. Usually, if you’re going to modify child support, you need to be able to show that there’s been some kind of a change in circumstances that justifies the modification. So, did you lose your job? Did you get a job? Did the other side lose their job or get a job?
Has there been a pay raise or a pay decrease? Do you have more kids now? Do you have some of the kids aged out, and so you want to lower the child support amount, so you’re not paying child support on a kid that is not there anymore? Because what I need to know is, I need to know what the incomes are now.
Factors Affecting Child Support Calculations
I need to know how many children are in your home. I need to know how many children are going to be in the other parent’s home because that gets factored in, and there’s a credit that goes towards in-home children for both sides. I need to know how many nights per year the child is going to be in your home versus the other side.
If you’re a noncustodial parent, and you have the child in your home for more than 120 nights out of the year, so 121 or up, you can start getting a credit on your child support amount. Are you getting the child more often, and so you want a credit or is the other side not getting the child as often, and you want to get that credit taken down?
Additional Considerations
The other things that we look at are health insurance. Are the kids covered by private health insurance? If so, who covers them? How much is the health insurance amount? The other thing I’m going to look at is daycare expenses. Are the children enrolled in daycare, and if so, how much is that daycare cost?
I said the last thing. The one last thing I’m going to look at is the children on state assistance. Are they on sooner care? Are you getting a daycare subsidy for daycare help? Because let’s be honest, daycare is insanely expensive these days. Things like that I need to know because I need to be able to factor that in to make sure that we’re calculating child support properly.
Schedule Your Low-Cost Initial Strategy Session
Ultimately, at the end of the day, though, I would much rather you come to my office and bring me too much information than not enough. I always tell my clients I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So if you’re in a situation where you’re looking at child support, you want to make a change, or you need some help with it, give us a call at 918-879-1681. I’m more than happy to sit down with you. We can go over what you have, and we can figure out kind of what it’s going to look like moving forward. My name is Carl Birkhead. I’m a family law attorney with Wirth Law Office, and I want to help you make law easy. Thank you.
