Legal Question in Family Law in Florida

Re: Child Support Payments

It depends on how regularly and continuously you get overtime and is often based on previous check stubs and IRS returns. Alternatively, if overtime is not regular, not likely, or just uncertain but still possible, the court may base the general calculation on base pay only and have you make an additional arrearage payment based on your next income tax return if you did get some overtime after all.

Re: Child Support Payments

I can answer the part of your question that deals with the calculation of child support. I'll have to give a very general response as to whether you can appeal as I do not have enough info. pertaing to that issue. this is all predicated on florida Law.

Child support is calculated by a formula, although parties often agree with each other as to an amount of support. You question comes up often.

You can always review Florida Statutes online. The particular area for child support is section 61.30. As you may already know, your net income and the other party's net income are added together at the beginning of the formula. Basically, yes, your net income is based on your reg. 40 hour pay and your overtime.

What you have to do is use your annual total wages to get an AVERAGE. We use average monthly income of the parties. From a w-2, take your total income less taxes, and divide by twelve (months) to get your average.

If the party paying support has a lot of overtime only during certain times of the year, some months, child support will be easy to pay and others, it will be harder (no o.t.). So that person will need to put away some monies when the o.t. is frequent.

As to you appealing, You need to know that each party has thirty days from the entry of an order or judgment to file an appeal. You also have one year to ask to set aside a judgment if there was fraud, coercion, misrepresentation or some other errors (you need to see that particular statute or rule of court). In family law, if someone committed fraud on a financial affidavit, you may also seek to have that final judgment set aside. An appeal is asking a higher court to review thew lower court's ruling. A motion to set aside a judgment is filed in the same court.

'Hope this helps. Tom Rosenblum