Florida child support - Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law

What Is Florida’s “Deadbeat Dad” Law, and How Can It Affect Your Family?

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 11:43:02 GMT

Child support obligations, on the one hand, and the failure to fulfill them, on the other, are among the biggest sources of conflict and resentment among divorced couples. Florida has laws to protect the rights of the parent ordered to pay child support and the one who receives child support payments on behalf of the children. The laws surrounding the enforcement of child support orders and the measures that Florida family courts can take to collect late child support payments are popularly known as the Deadbeat Dad Law, although this is something of a misnomer. First, not all parents who are required to pay child support are men. Second, not everyone who falls behind on child support payments does so as a means of intentionally evading parental responsibility. Except in the direst financial circumstances, Florida courts hold parents to the responsibility to provide financial support for their biological and adopted children. Thus, it is much easier to fall behind on child support obligations than it is for a court to absolve you of responsibility for them.

The Lengths to Which Courts can Go to Collect Child Support Payments

The court system can go to great lengths to collect overdue child support payments. These are some of the ways that courts can take money from you and apply it to child support if you do not pay:

Garnishing wages
Seeking bank accounts
Selling assets from your estate (even death cannot get you out of the obligation to pay child support)
Additionally, the court can impose the following non-financial punishments for failure to pay child support:
Contempt of court
Suspension of driver’s license
Suspension of passport

The Courts Generally Treat Child Support and Visitation as Unrelated

If you do not keep up with child support payments, the court can interfere greatly in your finances and in other aspects of your life, such as your right to drive and travel. What it cannot do is take away your right to spend time with your children. Parenting plans deal with every aspect of raising children after divorce except financial ones. For example, they specify which days, including which holidays, the children spend with each parent, and they specify which parent has the right to make certain decisions regarding the children’s education and health. The idea is that money comes and goes, but parent-child relationships are forever. Besides, the courts generally hold that it is in the best interest of the children to spend a substantial amount of time with both parents, regardless of financial circumstances. Conversely, having little or no visitation time with the children, even being estranged from them completely, does not erase child support obligations.

Contact Alan Burton About Enforcement of Child Support Orders

It can be frustrating if your former spouse does not make the child support payments that the court ordered as part of your divorce. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida to help get the child support money that is owed to you.

How Does Declaring Bankruptcy Affect Your Child Support Obligations?

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 19:48:08 GMT

The statistic that half of Americans could not come up with $400 in an emergency without borrowing is certainly alarming, but it is hardly surprising. Debt and financial hardship are huge problems in the United States. For many Americans, every paycheck means picking and choosing which bills to pay on time this pay period. It is easier to get relief from some debts than others. Many people see bankruptcy as their only option to start their financial situations over with a clean slate, but bankruptcy does not erase all your financial obligations. One financial obligation you are still responsible for, even if you file for bankruptcy, is child support.

What You do and Do Not Owe After Filing for Bankruptcy in Florida

Bankruptcy can free you from many of your debts. Debts that are “discharged” during bankruptcy are no longer your responsibility to pay. It does not, however, free you of all your financial obligations. With car loans and home mortgage loans, the car or house is collateral, meaning the lender can repossess it if you do not pay. If you declare bankruptcy, the lender can no longer pursue you for payments, but they can take back your car or house that is securing the loan.

Some debts, however, are non-dischargeable, which means that you still owe them even if you declare bankruptcy. Many non-dischargeable debts are obligations imposed on the debtor by a ruling in court. The following debts are non-dischargeable according to Florida bankruptcy laws:

Child support and alimony, including back child support
Settlements you must pay if you are held liable in a personal injury case
Fines for illegal acts, including everything from speeding tickets to fines included as part of a sentence for a criminal conviction
Most tax debts
Student loans

Is it Ever Possible to Get Out of Paying Child Support?

It is virtually impossible to get out of back child support obligations except by paying them. You can, however, avoid accruing new child support obligations under the following circumstances:

The child for whom you were paying child support becomes a legal adult or becomes legally emancipated.
You voluntarily terminate your parental rights. One example of this happening is when a stepfather legally adopts a child and the child’s biological father legally terminates his parental rights.
One parent submits a statement to the court, certifying that he or she does not need additional financial support from the child’s other parent.

In general, Florida regards financially supporting a child as a nearly inalienable obligation on the child’s parents. As long as you are the legal parent of a minor, you have an obligation to financially support your child. If you declare bankruptcy, it will not make your child support debts go away. You can, however, show the judge your declaration of bankruptcy as proof of your financial hardship. Some family court judges may take this as grounds to modify the payments you owe, at least temporarily.

Contact Alan R. Burton About Child Support Cases

Alan R. Burton deals exclusively with family law cases. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida if you think that your financial situation warrants modification of your child support obligations.

Can Private School Tuition Be a Child Support Obligation?

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 19:46:12 GMT

Child support is supposed to cover a child’s basic needs, such as food and shelter. What about educational expenses, though? Education is hardly a luxury; school attendance has been mandatory for American children for well over a century. Providing for a child’s education is an important aspect of parenting. Thus, Florida parenting plans include provisions about which parent is responsible for making various decisions related to the children’s education. What happens when parents divorce while their children are enrolled in private school?

The Children’s Best Interest

Every question related to a parenting plan is, at its core, about the best interest of the children. Education is one aspect of child-rearing about which parents are likely to have strong opinions. Some parents feel that sending children to a private school, even if it requires great financial sacrifice on the parents’ part, is the only way to ensure that the children study in a safe environment where teachers are genuinely invested in the children’s success. Others feel that private school tuition is an unnecessary expense and that parents could help their children more simply by saving money to help them with college tuition and other expenses related to early adulthood. The education issue is a perfect example of why parenting plans are individualized and not one size fits all.

In determining whether it is in a child’s best interest to continue attending private school after the parents divorce, judges tend not to take a position on whether the education the children will receive at a private school is better than what they would get at a public school. Rather, their aim is to cause as little disruption to the children’s lives as possible. If the children are already attending a private school, they have probably already formed friendships with their classmates and gotten used to having the teachers and school staff as a presence in their lives. Making them move to a different school would add another difficult adjustment to an already disruptive period in their lives.

Maintaining the Standard of Living

In determining amounts of spousal support and child support, judges take into account the family’s standard of living before the divorce. The idea is that it is not fair for one spouse to have to live much more modestly after the divorce than during the marriage, while the other spouse goes on with life as normal. Likewise, spending less time with the children after a divorce does not mean that you have less of a responsibility to support them financially. Forrest v. Ron was a Florida case involving child support obligations related to private school tuition. The court ruled that the parents had agreed to keep the children in private schools until they completed third grade; therefore, the children’s expenses, on the basis of which child support obligations were determined, reflected this.

Alan R. Burton can Help with Parenting Plan Questions

Every family is unique, and therefore, so is every parenting plan. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida if you think your parenting plan should be modified to better reflect your family’s needs and goals.

Yes, It Is Possible Not to Pay Child Support in Florida

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 12:15:04 GMT

For some people, complaining about money is a hobby, and some even elevate it to the status of a high art. While they might get a kick out of grousing about the prices of items on restaurant menus or in the supermarket, it is understood that they ultimately have a choice about which items they buy. What really ruffles people’s feathers are fees that they are legally required to pay. Even generally cheerful people grumble about taxes and parking tickets. Child support is another financial obligation that people often feel is imposed on them against their will. It is not hard to find divorced parents who, given the opportunity, will go on at length about how much better their financial situation would be if they did not have to pay child support. Even people who would never complain out loud might secretly wish that there were a way to be legally exempt from paying child support. In fact, there are several ways, but most of them involve circumstances you would not wish for yourself.

The Child Support That Most People Have to Pay

Florida has standard child support guidelines. The main criteria determining how much you must pay are your net income and the number of children you must support. Judges usually follow the child support guidelines closely. In fact, when a judge orders a child support amount that differs from the amount determined by the guidelines by more than 5%, the judge must file a written statement explaining why he or she decided on this new amount.

Exceptions to the Standard Child Support Guidelines in Florida

The most common reason that a court allows a parent to stop paying child support on a child is that the child becomes a legal adult. This usually happens on the child’s 18th birthday, but it can happen sooner if the child becomes legally emancipated as a teenager. If the parent’s parental rights are terminated, the parent can also stop paying earlier. A common reason for termination of parental rights is that another adult adopts the child. For example, if the mother remarries and the stepfather legally adopts the children, the biological father no longer has to pay child support, but he also no longer has a legal right to a relationship with the children.

Courts can terminate support agreements for reasons other than termination of parental rights. If one parent dies or is sentenced to a prison term, the judge can terminate the support agreement. In the case of incarceration, judges do not always terminate the agreement; sometimes courts impute income to the incarcerated parent, who must resume paying child support upon his or her release.

Finally, you can be exempt from paying child support if you and your ex-spouse agree in writing that the support is not needed. This usually happens when the parent who spends more time with the children has a higher income than the non-custodial parent.

Contact Alan Burton About Child Support Cases

To stop child support payments completely, the circumstances have to be quite extreme. Modifying child support orders, however, is more common. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida for help with your child support case.

Parker v. Parker: a Florida Paternity Fraud Case With a Surprising Outcome

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 14:00:45 GMT

Florida’s tradition of family law acknowledges that there is more than one way to be a father. The child’s biological father is not necessarily the child’s legal father. In fact, when establishing paternity, the courts do not always order DNA paternity tests. Sometimes a Voluntary Acknowledgement of Paternity is all you need. Things get more complicated when it comes to matters of child support, however. Is the biological father always the one who should pay child support for the child? The answer, according to Florida case law, is that it depends, and not always in the ways you would expect. The decision in the Parker v. Parker case will surprise many people, but the reasons behind the decision reveal a lot about what it means to be a father in Florida.

The Facts of the Parker v. Parker Case

Parker v. Parker made news as the case in which a Florida court ordered a man to continue to pay child support for his ex-wife’s son even after a DNA test proved that he was not the child’s biological father. When Richard Parker and his wife Margaret initiated their divorce, their son was more than a year old. The court ordered Richard to pay $1,200 per month in child support. Richard fell behind on the child support payments, and the court tried to enforce payment of them. Richard responded by expressing doubt that he was the child’s biological father, as Margaret had been unfaithful to him during the marriage. Even after the family underwent DNA testing, and the results showed the Richard was not the biological father, the court required him to continue paying child support. Why would a court order a man to pay child support for a child of whom he was not the biological father and whom he did not adopt?

Protecting the Best Interest of the Child

The short answer as to why the court did not release Richard Parker from his child support obligations is “statute of limitations.” The court argued that if Richard had serious doubts about his genetic relationship to the child, he should have raised the issue at the time the divorce papers were filed. The statute of limitations would have given him one year from the time of filing. In actuality, he waited 16 months. To the court, it appeared that Richard only thought to challenge his paternity as a last resort to get out from under a heavy burden of child support obligations.

In awarding rights and obligations to a child’s legal parents, the court must prioritize the best interests of the child. Richard Parker had raised his wife’s son since birth and he seemed to want to continue to be involved in the child’s life, even after the results of the DNA test were revealed. The family court system is committed to seeing that children are cared for and financially supported; it protects them from being used as a weapon by adults, to punish their ex-spouses.

Alan R. Burton Will Protect Your Child’s Interests and Yours

Paternity is one of the most complex issues in Florida law, and one where a wise and compassionate attorney is most needed. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida about cases involving paternity and child support.

What Is “Good Fortune” Child Support in Florida?

Alan R. Burton Attorney at Law — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:29:37 GMT

Florida child support laws include a specific formula by which to calculate child support orders. The formula takes into account factors such as the number of children at issue, each parent’s income, expenses, costs of child care, costs of the child’s healthcare, any special needs of a child, and more. These calculations are meant to cover the basic necessities of the child. Generally, a court is expected to follow the guidelines for child support, however the court does have a limited amount of discretion to stray from the guidelines if it finds the circumstances justify such a decision. In most situations, however, the court may only deviate from the set formula by five percent.

Good Fortune Child Support

There are some circumstances under which a court may divert more substantially from the child support formulas and order child support amounts that cover more than just a child’s basic needs. This is referred to in Florida as “good fortune” child support, and is often awarded in cases in which one parent is particularly affluent. Courts have determined that children of such parents deserve to benefit from that parent’s wealth and success, especially since they would enjoy such benefits if the parents were married.

Benefits from a wealthy parent may include private education, travel opportunities, amenities, or other special activities that are above and beyond basic necessities. Additionally, higher child support payments may help establish savings and trusts for the children of a wealthy parent, even if they reside primarily with the other parent. However, there are limitations to good fortune child support awards. A court will limit its order to an amount that supports an appropriate lifestyle for the child, and will not require a wealthy parent pay an unnecessarily excessive amount simply because they can. For example, if a child already has all of his or her special expenses adequately covered, a court will not continue to increase the child support just because a parent’s wealth increases.

The following is an example of a case in which a court may be warranted in ordering good fortune child support. Tramar Lacel Dillard is a popular rapper commonly known as “Flo Rida,” and he has an estimated net worth of $30 million. Recently, model Natasha Georgette Williams established via a court ordered paternity test that Flo Rida is the father of her newborn son. Williams has filed suit in Florida requesting good fortune child support based on the rapper’s significant net worth and success. The court has yet to rule on that request, however, though it seems like it may be an appropriate case for such support.

Contact a Boca Raton Child Support Attorney for Assistance

If you are seeking good fortune child support for your child or are facing any other type of child support determination, it is imperative to have a family law attorney handling your case who understands how child support laws in Florida operate. If you have any family law matter, please do not hesitate to call experienced lawyer Alan R. Burton at (954) 229-1660 or (954) 295-9222 today for assistance.