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Child Support Calculation in Divorce Mediation

When you get divorced, child support is used to cover your children’s basic needs and can sometimes be rather straight forward in New Jersey under certain circumstances.  If all of your kids live at home with you and you and your co-parent’s combined net yearly income is under $187,200 then you can use the New Jersey child support guidelines to calculate the child support amount.  But what if one or more of your children are in college while one or more of your children still live at home?  Most of their basic needs are met while they live away at college, but then they are home for a month for winter break and several months over the summer.  How will their basic needs be met and who is paying for them during this off-time? What if your income is higher than this upper limit? What if you change which parent covers the children on their health insurance? When is a recalculation of child support justified?

These are just a few examples of situations that make the child support calculation less straight forward.  In reality, many co-parents are quite anxious about how to figure this child support calculation out and what the number will be. During divorce mediation you will address this situation with an expert divorce mediator.  The mediator will explain the various factors that are used (more than just income) in the calculation.  A divorce mediator can run multiple versions of the child support calculations changing different circumstance (who is claiming the children for tax purposes is a big one) to give you options regarding that monthly number. 

The divorce mediators at Westfield Mediation, LLC, understand the anxiety that often accompanies the topic of child support.  Parents want to financially support their children, but what if the number is astonishing. Often the person who will pay child support thinks the number is too high and can’t see how they will afford it and the person receiving it thinks it is way too low and needs more money. Going through the child support calculation with a divorce mediator allows the co-parents to view various options and pick a path that works for both of them.  It is not as direct as you may think but it will be a way forward.

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