Child Support - who gets it and why?

A simple, straightforward-sounding question, right?

...and yet, so many people misunderstand the concept, who is entitled to receive child support and why. Here is some basic information:

1. Child support is the right of the child (or children, depending on your case). This means that parents have limited rights to make "deals" about child support;

2. Generally speaking, child support is paid to the parent who has care of a child on a day-to-day basis, either primarily or by sharing that responsibility with the other parent; *

3. Child support is meant to fund a child's expenses - both day-to-day expenses but also special expenses like sports and other extra-curricular activities;

4. When the child in question is a minor, child support is paid to the parent who incurs expenses for the child (and not to the child directly - we get a lot of questions about this point);

5. In Canada, there are two elements to child support:

a. the table amount - the recurring monthly amount which is calculated based on the non-primary-residential parent's income; and

b. an additional payment (paid either monthly or at some other frequency) which is the non-primary-residential parent's contribution to special or extraordinary expenses like extracurricular activities and schooling/daycare;

6. Child Support does not necessarily end when a child turns 18. It continues for a reasonable period of time while the child (young person) remains financially dependant on his or her parents, either for medical reasons or because of ongoing school attendance.

These are the bare basics - there is a lot more to child support and you should get advice on the specific circumstances of your case.

*special considerations apply when two parents have one child each living with them and also when a child spends at least 40% of the time with the non-residential parent.


UPDATE - January, 2018

We are pleased to let you know that our Etsy shop is now OPEN!

Visit it here: SELFREP SUPPORT

In the shop, we make available to you Manuals (E-books) on various topics, to assist you in representing yourself before Ontario's family law Courts.

So far, we have Manuals on preparing an effective:

• Financial Statement (both long-form and short-form); and
• Affidavit.

MORE MANUALS TO COME! 

Support and related income considerations

When support (either child or spousal) is an issue in a family law case, there are a number of questions which need to be addressed before the actual support calculation is made.  

For example, in the case of child support, is a young person over the age of 18 still eligible to receive child support?  If so, in what form is that support to be paid? To whom? 

On the issue of spousal support, is the potential support recipient making best efforts to contribute to his or her own support based on their current ability to do so?

The income of the potential payor is a key question to address in any consideration of support obligations.  “Income for tax purposes" is not necessarily “income for support purposes” in family law.  In other words, simply because Canada Revenue Agency accepts a potential payor’s representations of his or her income for tax purposes does not mean that a family law Judge will do the same. 

Family law spreads a much wider sweep over a potential payor’s income sources to determine the true extent of his or her ability to pay support.  

The Child Support Guidelines, which technically apply to the calculation of child support but have now been wildly accepted as applying to spousal support calculations as well, permit the inclusion in income for support purposes of a wide variety of income sources.  The intent of the legislation is to ensure that financial dependants receive support based on all sources of the payor's actual income but also on sources which are available to the payor, even if he or she chooses not to tap into them. 

By way of one example only, income earned by a business which is not paid out to a shareholder but could be is vulnerable to being included in his or her income for support purposes.  Personal expenses run through the business are also vulnerable to being added back to the payor’s income for support purposes.

The child support "grid"...

I recently heard a radio talk show host refer to a "child support grid". I have heard this phrase used in other contexts as well. What does it mean?

The "grid", otherwise known as a "table", is a tool which assists us in calculating the first of the two components of child support, commonly known as the "table amount".

Child support in Canada is generally calculated using both federal and provincial legislation (depending on whether the parents of the child were married or not) called the Child Support Guidelines. This legislation includes a series of tables which set out monthly amounts payable by the parent with whom the child or children in question do not live primarily, in different Provinces and based on different income levels. 

These tables are sometimes referred to as "grids" because they actually look like grids. On the left hand side of each table, there is a column with incremental income amounts and to the right are corresponding table child support amounts, depending on the number of children involved.

There is a separate table for each Province because the cost of raising children varies from location to location. 

The child support amounts set out in the grid represent the monthly amount to be paid by the non-residential parent to the primary residential parent, on a monthly and repeating basis - the tables do not provide for an automatic terminating event or date - that is a question which depends on the facts of each particular case.

The amounts provided for in the tables are "net" to the recipient parent. This means that no tax is paid by that parent on the table amount received. Correspondingly, the payor parent does not have an opportunity to deduct these amounts for tax purposes (this is different than the tax treatment of periodic spousal support).

Child Support over 18

Many support payors and recipients in Canada think that child support is payable only until a child turns 18. In fact, that is not correct.

In Canada, child support is payable to young persons, even over the age of 18, who for good reason are not able to withdraw from their parents' financial assistance. What are such "good reasons"? There can be two (or a combination of them):

1. a child attends school (for example, university or college, but there may be other schools which would qualify) - depending on the financial resources of the parents, support may continue even after one degree is completed; or

2. for medical reasons, a young person over 18 cannot become financially independent (for example, the child has a long term disability or was involved in an accident and is recovering).

One very common scenario we get questions about is the following:

Fictional Chloe attends Fictional University and is in her 3rd year. Early in the second term, she is in a car accident and is unable to finish the year. By the beginning of the 4th year, she is not able to return to school full-time and can only take a half-course load, for medical reasons. We get asked: is she still entitled to child support? - the answer is "yes" - that is because she is still "a child of the marriage", which is a phrase used to describe a young person who either for medical reasons or because she remains at school cannot become financially independent. In this scenario, it's a bit of both - she is not in school for medical reasons but would otherwise be - child support remains payable even when she is taking less than a full course load.

UPDATE - January, 2018

We are pleased to let you know that our Etsy shop is now OPEN!

Visit it here: SELFREP SUPPORT

In the shop, we make available to you Manuals (E-books) on various topics, to assist you in representing yourself before Ontario's family law Courts.

So far, we have Manuals on preparing an effective:

• Financial Statement (both long-form and short-form); and
• Affidavit.

MORE MANUALS TO COME! 

"Shared custody" and "Split custody"

In general terms, in Ontario the phrase "custody" refers to decision-making about a child or children. For example, we use the phrases "sole custody" and "joint custody" to describe arrangements based on which either one or both parents make major decisions about a child or children.

The Child Support Guidelines (both federal and provincial) use the phrase "custody" in a different way and this occasionally causes confusion among parents facing separation.

The phrases "shared custody" and "split custody" refer to a child's or children's residential arrangements rather than the basis on which the child's or children's parents made decisions about them.

Shared custody is a situation in which each of the parents has residence of or access to a child or children for at least 40% of the time. Special child support considerations apply in such situations and in the Federal Child Support Guidelines, those considerations are addressed by section 9.

Split custody is a situation in which each parent has custody of one or more of the children (for split custody to apply, there must be at least two children). Again, the Guidelines provide for a specific mechanism for addressing child support in those situations, under section 8.

Art by Leontine Greenberg - http://www.flickr.com/photos/leontinemay/

"I have daycare expenses...will the other parent contribute?"

Pursuant to the Federal (and Ontario) Child Support Guidelines, daycare expenses are special or extraordinary expenses if they result from the residential parent's employment, illness, education or training. This means that if you have to have care for your child/children for any of those reasons, the other parent is expected to contribute to the cost of those expenses, proportionately to his or her income.  The portion of the expense which you and the other parent will be sharing is the after-tax-deduction cost of it. In other words, in determining how much she/he is to pay you per month, for example, you need to take into account the fact that you will be taking a tax deduction for the expense on your Income Tax Return. For answers to more specific question, consult a lawyer....

Art by Liz Brizzi ~ Escape Route

What is the "table" amount of child support?

Family law Courts and lawyers use this phrase in their daily parlance - the "table" amount of child support - what does it mean?

This is one of the two components of child support payable in Canada (as opposed to a contribution to special and extraordinary or "section 7" expenses).

This component of child support is calculated based on tables which are part of the Child Support Guidelines (both federal and provincial) - hence the monicker. These tables provide net figures of monthly child support payable, based on the following factors:

1. the number of children in question;
2. the province in question;
3. the income level of the payor (and only the payor parent - the income of the residential parent is not generally relevant for the table child support calculation).

Some issues to think about when talking about the table amount of child support:

1. special considerations apply when the income of the payor parent is more than $150,000;

2. special considerations apply in shared custody and split custody situations (see my earlier post about the confusion surrounding the issue of the word "custody" in these situations).

3. the question of "income for support purposes", ie: the income to be used when determining child support obligations under the tables, is not an easy one, particularly in situations where the payor parent is self-employed.

The table amount of child support is neither taxable to the recipient parent nor tax-deductible to the payor parent.

A beautiful fence in Northern Ontario..

Photo by AJJ