By Associated Press
Birmingham, AL – Alabama courts have issued the first update in 15 years to child-support payment guidelines for divorcing parents, raising the amount for middle-income families and lowering it for extremely poor and upper-income families.
The new figures apply only to cases filed after Jan. 1, although a limited number of current child-support orders may be eligible for modification.
The update reflects more current costs for raising children, modern tax rates and other factors, court officials said. It also has a broader schedule of child support.
The guidelines set the recommended total financial support for divorced families with one to six children.
Child support obligations will continue to be based on the two parents' combined income. The noncustodial parent's payment is based on that parent's percentage of the combined income.
If the two parents make the same amount of money and the recommended child support is $990 a month, the base payment for the noncustodial parent would be $495 a month. Work-related child care costs and health-insurance costs also affect the parents' child-support obligations.
The current version sets a schedule of benefits for combined incomes up to $120,000. When the parents' income exceeded that level, the child support was left to the judge's discretion.
The new guidelines set child support benefits for combined incomes up to $240,000.
The guidelines are not binding on Family Court judges, although the judges must explain in writing if they go above or below the guideline amount. Allowable reasons include parents with extraordinary transportation costs for visitation and college expenses, according to the guidelines.
For parents with existing child-support orders, the new guidelines do not mean the payments automatically will change, said Dean Hartzog, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
"There must be a material change in financial circumstances," Hartzog told The Birmingham News for a story Sunday. "If the guidelines do not change the payment by at least 10 percent, it will not be considered a material change."
Most Alabama families whose income is above the poverty level, about $19,000 for a family with two children, will see an increase in the child-support obligation, according to a Colorado-based Center for Policy Research report, which helped draft the new guidelines.
For families with very low incomes, the child support price will go down, based in part on studies showing that child-support payments for low-income parents sometimes exceed half of their income.
Families with higher incomes also should see a reduction in the child support obligation. That's due, in part, to recent studies showing that children consume a lower percentage of household income in high-income families, according to the Center for Policy Research.