California Guideline Child Support - When is It Not Appropriate?
Posted on Tue, Aug 09, 2011 @ 04:26 PM
A previous post explained how the California Family Court decides the "guideline" levels for child support (The original post can be found here). This post considers some special circumstances where the Court can issue a support order that is outside of the support guidelines.
When developing a Child Support Order, the overriding concern of the court is to protect a child's right to material wellbeing by requiring parents to contribute financially. With this in mind, the California Family Court developed guideline support formula as a straightforward means to ensure a child's material wellbeing. However, the guideline support formula is not always used, nor is it always appropriate.
When might guideline support amounts simply not be used?
Sometimes, as parents work to reach agreements on child custody arrangements, visitation, and support, they may agree to a child support amount that is below what the guideline formula recommends. They will draft an agreement that reflects this lower support amount and submit it to the court. The court will review, and sometimes grant these requests, but the parents must be able to demonstrate that the lower support amount will still meet the child’s needs, and the parents will need to sign special statements that that are mandated by the California Family Code with regards to this lower support amount that acknowledge their responsibilities with regards to support. Conversely, parents can always voluntarily agree to pay a support amount that higher than the guideline recommendation.
When might the guideline support amount not be appropriate?
It is common in very high asset/income cases for a high-income-earning parent to ask the court not to apply the guideline formula because guideline support would result in a number that grossly exceeds the child’s needs. For example, there are some high income and asset scenarios in which the child support guidelines would suggest child support amounts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In situations like these, where there is so much money at stake, the court would ask for a forensic accountant to analyze the true cost of maintaining the child’s lifestyle at the time that the parents were married. Once the forensic accountant completed this analysis, the court might find that guideline support exceeds what is truly needed to support the child at the marital level.
California case law regarding high income/ high asset families has developed in recent years to ensure that children will not experience a huge economic shift when living with each parent post divorce, that is, there should not be a rich parent and a poor parent. Indeed, there are cases where the high income parent has custody of a child 90% of the time, but must still pay a significant amount of child support to the other parent so that the child does not experience a huge economic disparity when visiting the other parent. This means the child support must be high enough for the other parent to live in comfortable circumstances (including housing) even if the child is with that parent only 10% of the year.
The goal in the very high income case is to ensure while living with both parents, the child enjoys a similar lifestyle. Using San Mateo County as an example, according to the Court, a child should not be transferring from one parent’s rental home in a modest community to the other parent’s estate in Hillsborough, Atherton, or Woodside. Or, to consider a recent, high-profile example, if we assume that Arnold Schwartzeneggar has a legal obligation to support the child born from his relationship with the family housekeeper, Mildred Baena, then that child would be entitled to an amount of child support that would allow him to experience a similar standard of living at his mother’s home as that of his father’s home. In an attempt to reach a similar standard of living, there would have to be sufficient child support to allow for private schooling, vacation homes, trips and vacations, private jet travel, activities such as horses or equestrian events, so that any event or activity that the child enjoys in one parents home can be equally enjoyed in the other parent’s home.