There are a bunch of quotes engraved into the wall upon first entering the Family Court building in Manhattan. Stuff about kids being our future, justice prevailing, blah blah blah. I think this one, or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" needs to be added.
My dealings with Family Court were the first motivation in starting this blog. I wanted to vent my frustrations, collect my thoughts, and consolidate what I've learned through research, from my lawyer, and based on my own experiences. Like I've mentioned, I haven't seen a lot out there regarding people sharing their experiences as single parents (by choice, I've seen blogs by widows/widowers) in a blog format. Yes, it's messy. It's frustrating. It's a less than ideal situation. If anyone ever reads this, I hope they take something away from it - insight, hopefully some humor.
My ex and I were never married. Therefore, none of this was decided in divorce negotiations behind closed doors - everything was done in Family Court. There are two components of Family Court (for my purposes, anyway): Custody and Support. Support, for me, has been the more frustrating of the two, so I'll start there.
Some background: My ex and I split somewhat amicably, almost three years ago now. There was a final fight that led to him moving out, but we had been slowly but surely making our way to that point, and it had been clear for a while that neither of us wanted to be with the other, we were just in it for our daughter. Because there wasn't a ton of drama surrounding our split initially, we were able to come to an agreement amongst ourselves regarding childcare/visitation and support. However, about six months in, some problems began to arise and we both agreed we should have everything made "official" in Court. His child support payment increased from what he had been giving me previously, but it wasn't a dramatic enough amount to warrant a trial. We went in front of the Judge, who calculated the payments. My ex submitted his work information, and the payments were set up to come out of his check automatically.
The common understanding is that child support for one child is a flat 17% of the non-custodial parent's income. Not true. In cases where the combined income is less than $140,000, both parents' incomes are added, and then the percentage each parent supplies of that total income is calculated. The non-custodial parent pays his/her percentage of 17% of that combined income.
So for example, say the custodial parent's income is 60,000. The non-custodial parent's income is 40,000. Their combined income, for the math impaired, would be 100,000. 17% of this would be 17,000, and the non-custodial parent's obligation would be 40% of that, or 6,800. This is then divided by 52, to be paid weekly (or 12 to be paid monthly, etc. I think this varies based on the non-custodial's pay schedule, or maybe just some random reason the court comes up with). This is the basic support "award". I'm not sure what I've supposedly won here... Childcare and health care expenses are calculated seperately, at the non-custodial parent's obligation percentage, which is 40% in our example. Say childcare expenses are $1000 a month. The non-custodial parent is obligated to pay $400 a month. The Support Collections Unit (SCU) will break this down into a weekly payment to correspond with the basic support payment schedule, and divide it by 4.3 (the number of weeks in a month, according to the SCU). Medical expenses are calculated at the same percentage, but since they're usually a one time thing, not weekly/monthly, they were payable directly to me rather than through the SCU (which of course meant I never saw any of that money).
As you can see, this means that the custodial parent's income can increase, and the non-custodial parent's can stay the same, but the non-custodial's obligation percentage can decrease as a result. Fair, right? The custodial parent works harder, gets a raise, and the non-custodial parent is rewarded with a decrease in their obligation. Keep that in mind when I start getting into my recent adventures at court.
So an order is set up, you're done, right? Wrong. Over the past year alone, I have been back at Family Court to either file a petition or appear for court more times than I can count. What is a petition? There are violation petitions, for when the support isn't getting paid at all, on time or in full. There are modification petitions, for when there is a significant change in either parent's income or the custodial parent's child related expenses. I started the process of modifying our existing support order over a year ago, when I knew I was going to need full time childcare. Our previous order only had a small amount for a part-time babysitter.
I am still dealing with that, over a year and numerous appearances later. Now that I've provided my background and a very brief overview of how child support works in New York, I'll share my nightmare. But this post is long enough, so I'll continue tomorrow.
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