A. James Mullaney III

Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer A. James Mullaney briefly describes his practice.

Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer A. James Mullaney discusses how to legally avoid paying child support in Florida.

For more information, visit the website http://www.jimmullaney.com

First, all child support in Florida must be calculated according the child support guidelines. So to legally avoid paying child support, you need to manipulate the factors used in the calculation in order to produce a child support amount that is as close as possible to zero.

In my experience, judges will allow you to pay zero if the guidelines show a low amount of monthly child support - such as $25. This can be done in some - but certainly not all cases.

Second, you need to understand the factors used in the child support calculation. In Florida, child support is based on income, deductions from income such as taxes and child support paid in other cases, as well as day care expense, the child medical insurance cost, and the number of nights spent with each parent over the course of a year.

The most common way for child support to be close to zero, is when the parents spend equal time with the child and earn about the same income.

If the parents incomes are not roughly the same, the way to eliminate child support - other than lying about income and the other factors // which you should never do - is to vary the number of nights that each parent spends with the child until you get to a very low child support amount.

The potential problem with this process is that it may result in a number of nights with the child that one or both parents are not comfortable with.

Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer A. James Mullaney gives an explanation of a Florida Child Support Guidelines Worksheet

For more information, visit the website http://www.jimmullaney.com

I'm going to walk through what all these numbers mean in a Child Support Guidelines Worksheet. Hopefully so you can better understand what is going on here. There are a lot of numbers. Only a very few are actually input into the system.

This is a sample worksheet, not an actual client's worksheet. But this is more in line with what you will see at a court hearing, rather than the Child Support Guidelines Worksheet that the Supreme Court of Florida puts on their website.

The first thing to notice is the number of children. The combined number of children. Here we have two (2) children. And they are living primarily with the Wife. Zero of the children living with the Husband. The next data that is input in the first section up here is in the income section. It shows a Wife with $3109 of monthly income, and a Husband with $5400 of monthly income. It totals these numbers up to $8509. These other lines here are for other ways you can make money. Basically they are all treated the same except for non-taxable income - which generally only comes up in a military context (but there are others). So the difference between the $8509 and the $7285 are the various deductions and this is what the rest of this side of the worksheet is talking about. It lists the various deductions - alimony payments, taxes, and other main ones union - dues, mandatory retirement plans, parent's health insurance cost (but not the children's, that is treated somewhere else). But the parent's health insurance cost as well as child support that is ordered and paid in other cases - not this case, but is ordered and paid in other cases.

Each parent's net income is calculated and then it's added up to the $7285 - and that's the number that is reflected on the next screen with the minimum child support need of $1921.

OK, so to review, the only numbers input on the left side of the screen were the number of children, the income of the Wife, the income of the Husband - nothing was input as any alimony payment made by either party. The taxes are calculated automatically, and there are no other deductions used. The numbers here at the bottom are all automatically calculated. And that gets us to the other side where we initially see the minimum child support need of $1921.

So starting on this side, the numbers that are input are simply .... the number of overnights that the children are going to have with the Husband. Based on the minimum child support need of $1921, the two (2) next numbers get divided up based on the percentages of income. So, in this situation, the Husband would typically pay $1108 a month in child support. That's not going to be the case here because of the number of nights [with the children]. The law requires a reduction in his child support if he spends more than 20% of the nights with the children. Here is shows you his percentage - 27.4%. So that will provide, due to some interesting math provided by the statute, a pre-adjustment transfer - so that's his base child support amount based on his number of nights and his income - of $873.

Next we go down to a couple of expenses that are counted in a child support calculation. First, this hypothetical couple pays $450 a month in day care costs and $350 a month in medical. And here you can see that the Wife pays the child care and the Husband pays the medical . Each is responsible for only a portion of those numbers even though they pay the entire amount of each one. The Wife is responsible for 42.3% of both costs. And the Husband is responsible for 57.7% of both costs. So instead of the having the Wife pay some money to the Husband and the Husband paying some money to the Wife, there's only one transfer and that's the $111.68 that the Husband pay in additional child support due to these expenses. We add that to the pre-adjustment transfer and you have him final child support amount of $985.06.

http://www.jimmullaney.com James Mullaney is Certified Family Court Mediator. You should consider using divorce mediation in Jacksonville Florida if you are interested in a lower cost alternative to the normal divorce process.

Please visit the website for more information.

http://www.jimmullaney.com Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer A.James Mullaney discusses the process and advantages of an Uncontested Divorce in Jacksonville Florida. If you and your spouse agree on ALL the terms of your divorce, you can have an uncontested divorce. This type of case has the advantage of being less expensive and offers a quicker end to your marriage. You can learn more at the website.

Law Office of James Mullaney. I handle all the complexities of family law such as divorce, child custody, paternity, adoption & child support, also military divorce. Call 904.858-4334.

I am also a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Court Mediator. Mediation is a lower cost alternative to litigation.