Issues in Child support in Texas Family Law Courts are often raised when a married couple starts seeking a divorce. If you happen to be the person who will have to pay child support, you are probably thinking that the amount you will have to pay is too much. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want to support your child, or that you don’t love your child. Oftentimes, it’s just that you don’t want to pay money that will go directly to your ex’s hands. Many people have mixed emotions while fighting for child support in Texas Family Law courts because of this reason.
There’s always another side to every story. If you happen to be the parent who will be at the receiving end after the fight for child support in Texas Family law courts, you will probably think that the guidelines are not exactly helping in providing your child enough child support from your ex. You already lost an entire income thanks to your divorce, and the child support amount set by the guidelines is too little to support everything your child needs.
Regardless of which side you belong to in your fight for child support in Texas Family Law Courts, there is important information that we have to discuss.
What You Have to Pay or Receive
As previously mentioned, there are certain guideline amount when it comes to child support in Texas.
Once the net resources of a parent are known, it will be subject to these percentages:
20% for one child, 25% for two children, 30% for three children, 35% for four children and 40% for five children. If you have more than five children, expect to pay not more than 50% of your net income and not less than 40%.
Understanding Your Net Resources
During the fight for child support in Texas family law courts, you will encounter the phrase ‘net resources’ a lot. What does this refer to exactly? Net resources are often determined in order to calculate the actual child support amount. Your or your ex’s net resources includes the monthly salary, overtime payments, commission, bonuses, self-employment income, and other types of income. From these, social security and federal income taxes, as well as health insurance premiums for the children will be subtracted. The amount that remains will be what you can refer to as your ‘net resources.’
Net resources sound simple but the calculation of it is often the most debated factor in a divorce. This can be quite complicated if the parent who is supposed to pay child support has many different sources of income. It will really be helpful to hire an attorney experienced legal battles related to child support in Texas family law courts. An experienced attorney will be able to help in calculating the child support amount despite your or your ex-spouse’s many sources of monthly income. Whether you want to child support amount to decrease or increase, an attorney will help you in achieving your goals where child support in Texas family law courts is concerned. There will surely be a huge difference in your case if there’s an experienced family law attorney helping you.
Paying Child Support
If you haven’t read any of our previous articles regarding child support, you might wonder how child support is paid. There are certain documents that will be filed related to child support in Texas Family Law Courts. There are the wage withholding orders that are usually filed along with the closing documents. This order will identify the parent who will be responsible for paying child support, and it is sent to the court. The judge will then sign it, and it will be sent to the paying parent’s employer with the amount that is to be deducted from your salary. The deduction can be deducted monthly or bi-monthly.
This kind of setup is great for both the paying parent and the receiving parent. If you are the paying parent, you won’t have to worry about falling behind on your payments as long as you maintain your employment. If the receiving parent has problems with the child support, you will have solid evidence that child support has been subtracted and paid promptly as well. You won’t even have to give the child support amount to your ex directly. Instead, the Child Support Disbursement Office of the Attorney General will handle it for you.
Being the Receiving Parent
If you are the receiving parent will also benefit from this arrangement. If you are the receiving parent, you won’t have to go to your ex-spouse to ask for child support payments. You won’t receive partial payments and there will be no missed child support payments either, with this order in place. Your ex-spouse will not handle the payments either, and everything is deducted automatically from his salary. As long as your ex continues his employment, there will be no issues with the child support amount you ought to receive.
Another great thing about this order is that you won’t have to go back to court asking for enforcement hearings for missed child support payments. If there are missed child support payments, you can just look up the records online to see how far behind your ex-spouse is in child support. It makes the process straightforward and a whole lot easier.
Divorce is never easy and the issues that come along with it can be tough. However, armed with proper knowledge and the assistance of an efficient family law attorney, you’d be able to get what you want regarding child support in Texas Family Law Courts.
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