Child Support in Indiana and the way it’s calculated has been the same for almost 50 years. That all changes with the start of the new year. Back in October, the Indiana Supreme Court approved new guidelines that make several changes to the laws regarding child support including but NOT limited to the following:
- Deviating from the guidelines set forth by Indiana State Law
- Calculating your weekly support figures
- Splitting uninsured medical expenses and costs
- Modifying your parent time credit calculations
The biggest change is with the Child Support Obligation Worksheet and Deviations form. These new guidelines insist that both parties file a Child Support Obligation Worksheet and include it in your local court records, no matter what current agreement you have with the other parent. In the past, Courts have accepted parties deviating from the child support guidelines, by agreement, with little or no explanation. The new laws that go into effect on January 1st require that both custodial and non-custodial parents are required to submit an explanation for deviation away from the support amount that is calculated by the guidelines. It’s important to note that the guidelines remove a few previous examples justifying deviation, like:
- The noncustodial parent buying school clothes;
- A parent still paying a former spouse for a prior divorce; and
- One parent traveling an unusually long distance to work.
However, the Court provided new examples in exchange, like:
- Parents sharing the child’s controlled expenses;
- A parent being on work release or a similar correctional program; and
- Children spending variable amounts of overnight time with the noncustodial parent.
The new law now says that uninsured health care expenses should be considered an “add-on” in the same way health insurance premiums are currently treated under the guidelines, with parents sharing the cost in proportion to their incomes. The “6% Rule”, required a child support recipient to pay a specific amount of uninsured health care expenses annually before allocating expenses proportionately by income. In theory, both parents would have a copy of their children’s insurance cards and information for medical expenses that came up during their parent time and could ask for the appropriate reimbursement from the other parent for expenses paid.
Overnight calculations are another area where changes will be made. Calculating child support requires addressing “overnight credits”, which has been difficult under the current model when multiple children within one family use different parenting time schedules. In essence, these new guidelines include adjustments based on the number of overnights each parent has with the child, aiming for a more equitable distribution of financial responsibilities.
It’s important to know that these changes are NOT automatic to current agreements. Custodial and non-custodial parents will have to decide if they want to make changes which could be pricey and time-consuming with courts and attorneys. If you have an open case with your local county child support office (Title IV-D), they should be able to work with parents to make adjustments. However, these changes may cause a major backlog so some lengthy waiting could be expected.
These new changes could have the potential for increases in child support you are paying or receiving. This is because these new rules and methods calculators approximate actual family spending on the children in question across different income levels; therefore, depending on the number of children and weekly income you could see higher or reduced payments.
More changes to child support have also been made that are not listed in this news story. To read more about these changes and others please visit:
https://www.in.gov/courts/files/order-rules-2023-1017-child-support.pdf.
