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Welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell, and I’m privileged to be joining Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, who is the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group, a family-oriented firm where decades of experience meet results. Hi, Bonnie.

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Hi, Michael. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. It’s a beautiful day.

I’m dressed for a little cool weather, but we’ll get there. I’m just coming back from the gym, so excuse the way I look. Bonnie, we get inundated with all sorts of suggestions from your viewers for topics to address, and one of the topics that has come up certainly more than once is how is support determined? And I think people want to go into this understanding, how am I going to have to support and how much support will I be getting? Can we talk a little bit about how support is determined? Sure.

Well, Michael, as you know, there are two different kinds. There’s child support and there’s spousal support. And then just to make our lives a little bit more confusing, there’s also two different types of spousal support.

The spousal support you get right when your case is starting, and that’s to maintain the status quo. And then the spousal support you may get at the end of the case when, you know, the judgment is done and you’re going about your way. So which would you like to talk about first? Well, I think that in looking at what people have been writing in, I think that they’re all over the place.

I think that they want to hear it all. So pick one and let’s go into it. Okay.

Well, child support in California and across the United States is based on what is known as a guideline formula calculator, and it’s the statewide calculator in California. So what goes into that is your gross income, not the income you take home at your paycheck. No, no, no.

It’s your gross income, the amount before the taxes. And interestingly enough, a lot of people think, you know, we have a lot of military members who have part taxable income and part not taxable income. And unfortunately, they mistakenly believe that their non-taxable income is not part of their income available for support.

It is. All of your income, interest income, dividend income, all your gross income is available for support. And this includes husband and wife.

Correct. So it is. There’s a calculator that has spouse A and spouse B and the time that they spend with the children.

If there are no children, then that’s not a factor. And it’s their gross income and a few other things like the health insurance that they spend, whether or not they contribute to their retirement, whether or not they have mandatory retirement or union dues or property taxes. Those things all go into the calculator and it spits out the number that one spouse may be owing another spouse.

I think the list you just went through is an example of why we’re getting so many questions because it’s not such a simple answer. It is quite complicated. Oh, and what’s best, better, Michael, is you can find all sorts of online calculators online and they’re all wrong.

Every one of them are not what the court uses. Not one. That’s incredible.

What other topics come under this in terms of determining support? Well, you know, other topics are your financials. You know, we need tax returns. We need bank statements.

We need to know property tax information, interest expense, 401k information. A lot of it can be found on your year to date pay stub, but some of it like health insurance, if you’re private paying health insurance, that’s not going to be on your pay stub. So you need to know that information.

Same thing with your property taxes. I suspect that you have two people, one of whom wants a lot of support and one of whom doesn’t want to give support. If people have questions about this, how can they be in touch with you for a free 30 minute consultation to get started digging into this more? Well, Michael, they can reach us directly at 619-574-8000 and you will be put on my calendar for a free 30 minute phone consultation.

Or you can reach us online at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com. There’s a form you fill out and we’ll reach back out to you to set up that consultation.