Child support is determined based on the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines.  These guidelines set forth a formula (in the form of a Worksheet) for determining an amount of child support that is appropriate. 

The Court is required to presume that the amount set by the formula is adequate to meet the reasonable needs of the children.  However, the Court can deviate from the Worksheet if the Court makes findings that the amount set by the Worksheet either exceeds, or is insufficient to meet, the reasonable needs of the children based on the respective ability of the parent to provide support.

Some judges are more willing than others to entertain requests to deviate from the child support guidelines.  Meeting the standard for deviation is intended to be fairly burdensome and you should assume that you will receive the amount set by the worksheet. 

Worksheet A (Primary Custody) is going to be applied if one party does not have 123 or more overnights per year, per child.  If a parent has 122 overnights or less per child, then it will technically not matter whether they have 60 overnights or 122.  They will pay a relatively higher amount of child support and their level of custodial time with the children will not afford them a reduction.  Important inputs in Child Support Worksheet A, and all other child support worksheets, will be the gross incomes of both parties, whether either party has other biological children that they have custody of or pay child support for, the amounts paid by either party for work-related daycare, the amounts paid by either party for health, dental and vision insurances and any “extraordinary” expenses (such as private school tuition, long distance travel costs for visitation, etc.).  Using this worksheet, the primary custodian will almost always be owed some amount of child support by the other parent.  There are some exceptions to this, but those are certainly the exceptions and not the rule.

Worksheet B (Joint or Shared Custody) will be applied if both parents have 123 or more overnights per year per child.  In this case, all of the inputs listed above will also be used for this worksheet, with the addition of each party’s overnights per year with the children also being factored in.  This will almost always result in a lower amount of child support than would result from application of Worksheet A.

Worksheet C (Split Custody) will be applied if one parent has primary custody of one or more children and the other parent has primary custody of one or more children.  In this situation, each parent will owe the other a support obligation for the child(ren) that reside primarily with the other party, and the result will be that those obligations will offset each other and the party who owes more will pay the difference to the other party.  All of the same inputs listed above will be used in this worksheet as well.

What worksheet will be used, what qualifies as income, work-related daycare costs, insurance costs or extraordinary expenses, and what to do about a parent who is either hiding income or intentionally not working are all issues that we will discuss during your initial consultation.