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Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Michael Mantell joining Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, who is the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. Hi Bonnie. Hi Michael, how are you doing today? Doing well.

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Oh it’s that time again, wait a minute. Oh yes, yes, yes. I was just going to do it.

Go ahead. So for everybody who’s listening, you can see that Dr. Michael Mantel, his last name is Mantel, but it’s spelled with two L’s. My last name, my married name is Mantel and it’s spelled with one L. We are not related.

We only found each other by the grace of the universe and we became amazing friends and he helps me out to do this, but we are not related. No kickbacks other than devotion and affection. Yes, well said.

I was going to say these family law matters that we do each week are wonderful opportunities for information education and to remind everyone that we’re not related, we just have names that sound similar, spelled incorrectly on your part. Okay, we’re going to talk about child care expenses today. This is a very interesting and complicated topic that I think people sort of scratch their heads about wondering how much am I responsible for? What’s covered? What isn’t? As the economy changes, how does it change? So teach us a little bit about child care expenses.

(1:34 – 2:52)
Well, Michael, you know that we’ve talked about many times about child support and what it covers, which is basic needs of the children. Well, there are also things called mandatory add-ons to child support. So you’re paying child support and then there’s these mandatory add-ons, unreimbursed health expenses.

If you go to the doctor, you break your arm, not all of it’s covered. There’s an unreimbursed and also child care that you need for employment, the search for employment or education related to employment. So if you’re working and you know, most of us are, thank gosh, and you have young kids and either they’re not in school or school ends at two and you don’t get out till six, there’s child care you have to pay for.

Well, we get a lot of people who are saying, well, I don’t need child care on my days. Why am I having to pay for half or the child care? And it used to be that once child support orders were made, each party had to pay 50% of child care, whether or not they needed it on their days. But if one party needed it, both parties paid half.

Well, now the law has changed a little bit. Now they say, wait a minute, that’s not always fair. We’re going to do child support.

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Once the child support is included, what is the net spendable income these parties have? What is their percentage of the net spendable income? So if one party still has 60% of the net spendable income and the other party has 40, the court’s going to say, nope, the 60 percenter pays 60%. The 40% only has to pay 40%. So now you’ve got the ability to negotiate or litigate whether or not you’re going to pay 50-50 or whether or not it’s 70-30 or whether or not it’s what it is.

But child care expenses are a mandatory add-on. So you don’t get to say, I don’t want to. Now then you’ve got issues, Michael.

What is child care? Right. Right. We have the child care facility that is a licensed facility.

That’s child care. We have the ESS, the after school or before school program. That’s child care.

What about summer camps during winter break, summer break, spring break? Just because your kids are off from school doesn’t mean you’re off from work. So the courts have started to realize that summer camp is considered child care, but it just may not be all summer camps, right? You’ve got horseback riding camp and you got to pay thousands or you’ve got, you know, day camp where you got to pay hundreds. The court may have an allocation on that as well.

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So if one parent says, I want my kid to go to that horseback riding camp or that European trip summer camp, and the other parent says, I’m not paying for that. I don’t think the kid needs to do that. How does Primus Family Law step in to help? We step in because the law says what’s reasonable.

So I would say to that parent or that parent’s attorney, look, my guy, my gal cannot afford the Europe summer camp, but can contribute. If the kid really wants to go, maybe we figure out, contribute this. And if the other parent still wants the child to go, that’s on the other parent.

And that is how a court would do it. Okay. And if people have questions about this, because I imagine this becomes a very hot topic in divorce.

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As many, how can people be in touch for a free 30 minute consultation with you or your esteemed team of lawyers and get some more information about all this? Well, they can reach us directly Michael at 619-574-8000, or we can be reached on our website at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com. There’s a live chat agent that’ll get you right over. There’s a form you can fill out and you’ll be put on one of our calendars for a free 30 minute phone or zoom as you prefer consultation.