What About Child Support?
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parent’s legal obligation to contribute to the economic maintenance and education of a child until the age of majority, the child’s emancipation before reaching majority, or the child’s completion of secondary education. The obligation is enforceable both civilly and criminally. In a custody divorce action, the money legal owed by one parent to the other for the expenses incurred for children of the marriage. The right to child support is the child’s right and cannot be waived, and any divorce-decree provision waiving child support is void. Black’s Law Dictionary 274 (9th ed. 2009).
In many cases, one parent is more financially capable of caring for the children then the other. To offset this, the courts will usually award one parent child support.
Child support can be affected by many factors, such as the parties’ income and potential income, the amount of time the child spends with each parent, the expenses each parent is incurring for child care or other unusual necessary expenses, and/or medical care and insurance. This calculation can be agreed to by the parties and an experienced family law attorney can help you negotiate a reasonable child support amount. If the parties cannot agree on an amount, then the court will use the Missouri Child Support Calculation Worksheet to determine the amount and who should pay.
In addition, the court has the discretion to determine whether any agreement between the parties is just and/or determine a different obligation is owed based on the court’s own calculation. The numbers are typically pre-determined by the worksheet, but an experienced family law attorney can also help you argue about the specific figures used to make the determination so that your actual income and expenses are fairly represented to the court. In a situation where custody is shared 50/50 and incomes are equal, it is possible that no child support will be ordered to be paid by either party.
