Legal Question in Family Law in Florida

Child support calculation with student parents

I (the father) dropped out of my dual major so that we would have an income while she (the mother) finished her pre-med degree.

Our son is seven months old now. She (and our son) lives with her parents, works only 8 hours a week ''due to her school schedule.''

I did a child support calculation, and the job I'm in the running for pays 40k/yr.

She makes about 12k/yr (down from ~30k-35k she made before we had the baby) at the restaraunt she works at.

Anyways, the calculation said my payments would be over $600 a month! Can she make me pay that much just by saying she's a full time student and can't work? She could just as easily gotten a full-time job and dropped the schooling to support the baby.

Now I'm between a rock and a hard place. I want to pay what is fair, I'm just not sure that this situation calls for what the online calculation came up with. She lives in a $500,000 house with her parents, and everything is taken care of (I've always paid for all of the formula, diapers, food, etc) and she pays nothing. She has no bills to speak of. She is 20 and lives rent-free with her parents, who support her 100%.

I'm barely getting by on my own.

Any suggestions???


Asked on 1/13/07, 1:27 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Marie-Anne Oatley

Re: Child support calculation with student parents

Outrageous! A court would most likely impute more income to her in the calculation of child support. The cases are clear. If she is mentally and physically capable of earning more without imposing unreasonably long hours of work on her, then she should do so in order to discharge her duties towards supporting her child. Additionally, if her parents are helping her with expenses and that has been going on for a while and on a regular basis, you might be able to include that as part of her income for calculation purposes (depending). Furthermore, if she, as you say, has no bills and lives rent-free, that might be a factor the court will take into consideration in order to deviate from the guidelines. Don't forget that you must start from a net income for calcuation, not gross. You can subtract income tax, FICA taxes and other things prior to calculation. $600 for one child with a total income of about $50,000 seems high. And, last thing I would mention, is that if you have overnight visitations an average of 40% or more, you can further reduce your payment (this is a complicated calculation but worth it).

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Answered on 1/13/07, 4:12 pm


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