In cases where the income of both parents exceeds $300,000 annually, the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines do not apply. However, the Child Support Guidelines can be used to establish a “floor” or minimum amount of child support. In Non Guideline cases, child support is based on the reasonable needs of the child, the accustomed standard of living of the child and the relative ability of each parent to provide support.

What this means is that the court will look at what have been the historical living expenses for a child: did a child attend public school or did the parents pay for private school? What kind of vacations did the child take? Did the child have trips to Europe and Disney World every year or two weeks at the beach in the summer? Did the children have a nanny? These historical expenses are used to show what the child and the family’s standard of living was during the marriage.

Typically, if an expense –even for a luxury items – has been consistently paid, a court will most likely regard the expense as reasonable and typical of the child’s accustomed standard of living. The court will then look at each parent’s ability to contribute to the payment of the child’s reasonable expenses. The court will look at whether one or both parents were wage-earners or one parent was a stay-at-home parent, the parties’ earnings from all sources including earnings from investments, and interest and dividends from bank accounts.

Click HERE to read Part 1 of this story.

For more information related to Divorce, Child support, family law in North Carolina Contact:

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 5:53 am and is filed under Child Support. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.