Articles Tagged with child support guidelines

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money-300x200When calculating child support obligation, the courts first look to the Child Support Guidelines established by the Supreme Court of New Jersey. The Guidelines factor in income from all sources of both parents in order to determine the parents’ respective child support obligations.   However, when it comes to income that is available for support purposes, what is important to consider is not merely what someone’s actual, earned wages are, but what the parents’ income capacities are.  If a parent is voluntarily underemployed or unemployed and earning less than what he or she is capable of earning, the Child Support Guidelines allows the court to impute income to the parent who could or should be earning more.   Child support would be calculated based on what a parent is capable of earning, rather than what the parent is actually earning.

It is not, however, always clear what a person is capable of earning or whether a person is voluntarily underemployed. Some people have sporadic or variable income.  Some people earn income from second jobs or from overtime hours.

In the recently published case of the Superior Court of New Jersey in Ferrer v. Colon, FD-2392-07 (Ch. Div. 2020), the family court assessed whether to impute income to a parent for child support purposes because overtime hours were available to her that she did not utilize.  Should the court impute income to her based on income available to her even if she did not take advantage of all of those hours?

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The Jolie/Pitt “Fight Club” continues. I previously blogged about the Jolie/Pitt divorce in “Fight Club: What You Can Learn From Angelina Jolie’s and Brad Pitt’s Long Term Relationship With Short Marriage“.  This week the media was abuzz with news of Angelina Jolie’s claims that Brad Pitt is not paying “meaningful child support,” which begs the question, what is “meaningful child5d984e7b33cffbf6bc1f5cd9b12b51d5-300x200 support”? Clearly, Jolie and Pitt are not your average parents. They both earn a significant amount of money. And, even though Jolie may very well be able to support their children on her income alone, that does not negate Pitt’s obligation to support the children.  I have blogged before about New Jersey child support when the parties earn more than the income stated in the Child Support Guidelines. Continue reading ›

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file000739321417On October 21, 2015, the Hon. L.R. Jones, J.S.C., a family court judge in Ocean County issued an opinion that was approved for publication this week in the matter of Fichter-v-Fichter. Judge Jones addressed the question of whether a parent already paying child support pursuant to those Guidelines also has to pay an additional amount for child support of a new licensed unemancipated teenage driver. Continue reading ›

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As the landscape of the “traditional family” continues to evolve, children are being born into multiple families requiring innovation in calculating child support obligations on behalf of children in these families. In  a previous blog entitled “Calculating Child Support for Multiple Families”, we outlined the procedure for properly calculating child support on behalf of children of multiple families pursuant to the Appellate Division decision in Harte v. Hand, 433 N.J Super. 457 (App. Div. 2013). Continue reading ›

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On April 28th 2014 the Appellate Division issued an unpublished decision in the post-judgment case of Fox v. Fox, A-2339-12T1, 2014 WL 1660394 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div.). The Appellate Division reversed and remanded the trial court’s decisions to deny Dorothy Fox n/k/a Lamuraglia’s motion to modify child support. Ms. Lamuraglia was seeking to terminate her child support on the grounds that the child was about to start college. Continue reading ›

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CalculatorOn December 18, 2013 the New Jersey Appellate Division published an opinion in the matter of Harte v. Hand. In the opinion, the Appellate Division addressed the issue of how to properly calculate child support on behalf of children of multiple families. Continue reading ›

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file0001679856317In my last post, I described the various items and expenses that are specifically built into the calculation of a child support obligation pursuant to the Child Support Guidelines in an attempt to explain and describe what a child support obligation is meant to cover.  In addition to the automatic and mandatory expenses built into the Child Support Guidelines calculation of child support, there are a number of expenses that should be included, if they are incurred by a particular family, in the calculation of child support.  Continue reading ›