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Hi, everyone. Welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell, and it’s a privilege to be with Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, owner and managing partner of The Primus Family Law Group, a family-oriented firm where experience meets results.

Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Michael. I’m so pleased I’m actually doing it from my office today instead of you guys all in my house.

I do work. This is not a virtual background. This is real.

(0:31 – 1:38)
It is. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so today, Bonnie, I thought we’d talk a little bit about the issue of child financial support.

This is a tough topic, and people continue to write in all kinds of ideas they want us to cover in The Primus Family Law Group, Family Law Matters, but what am I responsible for and so forth? So I want to toss out a couple of questions that people have written to us to cover, okay? Number one, what if my child turns 18 but my ex still owes child support? What happens then? Well, let me clarify that. When your child turns 18 automatically, 18, and has graduated high school, child support for that child terminates. But if you’re saying that somebody didn’t pay all they were supposed to pay from years before, so there are arrears, the parent and actually the child can still go and get that money because now that the child is an adult, essentially, that child support was for the child.

(1:38 – 3:51)
So both of them have standing to go get that money. Okay, and on the heels of that, the related question was, can the things that I purchased for my child as he or she or they were growing up, can that count as my monthly child support payment? No. So child support is based on the basics, food, clothing, shelter, the very basics.

That is what our guideline does. So if you decide you want your kid to have a computer, thank you, we appreciate that, but that is not your child support amount. Your child support is whatever that amount was ordered or whatever you and your ex have agreed to.

And you are actually not permitted to self-help. Say, hey, I paid for this, cost me a hundred bucks, so I’m going to deduct it from your child support. There are certain extra things that you actually have to pay over and above, for example, childcare.

Michael, if somebody needs childcare incident to employment, both parties are usually responsible to pay half, even if the other parent didn’t need the childcare. So that’s an extra on top of child support. Another extra on top of child support is any unreimbursed medical expenses.

So yeah, if we have medical insurance, whatever the insurance company covers, but anything out of pocket, copays, prescriptions, that is to be equally shared between the parties and is over and above. So if one parent wants to shop at Nordstrom and another parent can only afford Target, the parent shopping at Nordstrom doesn’t get to deduct that from the child support amount. Very interesting.

This is a hot topic that lots of people have concerns about. And especially what if a parent has no visitation rights? Do they still have to pay child support? We do get a lot of that question. And it’s interesting because if you have no visitation, meaning the other parent has a hundred percent custody and then a hundred percent responsibility to pay for everything, that’s not going to work.

(3:51 – 5:24)
You actually, if you have no visitation, you end up spending more in child support because you’re not taking some of that time where the court understands that you’ll be paying for food, clothing, all the basics at your house. So if you don’t see your child, your child support’s going through the roof. That’s why unfortunately a lot of people who don’t really have the ability based on their working schedule or the amount that they’re out of the house to have a large percentage of time, try to play games and ask for more time that they can’t really exercise in order to lower their child support.

You mentioned an important word, games, the games people play. How about if we take that up in the next edition of Family Law Matters? If people want to be in touch with you, how can they reach Primus Family Law Group? You can reach us at 619-574-8000 and we will set you up with a free 30-minute phone consultation with me to see how we can best help you in your family law matter. Or you can reach out to us at www.primusfamilylaw.com. We actually have a form you can fill out and that will get to us and we will still reach out and set up that free consultation.

That sounds terrific. I hope people will tune in to the next Family Law Matters when we talk about the games that people play when it comes to divorce. See you next time.

(5:25 – 5:27)
Bye Michael. Bye.