Hi, I'm Dave Ward from The Ward Law Firm, and today I want to talk about a couple changes that have been made to the issue of child support and child support calculations.
One of the things that happens whenever child support is being calculated is you have to produce something called a child support worksheet, and on that worksheet you would list the children who are being subject to this particular order. Well, what happens then when one of the children ages out or is no longer eligible to be supported under the law? Well, it used to be that you would have to go and file a modification action with the court and have the court go through the process of determining child support all over again.
Georgia's legislature has recently made a change that allows us to submit more than one child support worksheet, so we can do calculations for, for example if we have a family with three children, we can run the calculation for all three children and then the calculations for two of the children and then a calculation for the last remaining child.
Now, this greatly simplifies things because it means that you don't have to go back to court as these things happen, which can save people a lot of time and money. However, you really only need to be concerned about taking advantage of this in situations where you have a child who is perhaps in their late teens and may be getting ready to age out. Those are the situations where this is going to be the most helpful and the reason is, is because the longer period of time we have before these changes are going to be implemented, the more likely it is that child support will be reviewed at some time before that happens. That's one of the critical changes that's being made.
It is important to know that there are some judges at this point who are requiring it in all of their cases where there are multiple children's support that is at issue. However, not all judges are requiring that. Sometimes you'll have flexibility, sometimes you will not in trying to take advantage of this new opportunity.
If you have any questions about this, if you have multiple children, a child support obligation, and you're concerned about a child getting ready to age out, give me a call. I can be reached at the number below. I'm Dave Ward from The Ward Law Firm, and I protect business owners facing divorce.