Today, May 18, 2018, the court announced at the MCLE Family Law Conference that a new child support guidelines worksheet will be effective as of June 15, 2018.  The new worksheet is available here .  While the base Guidelines themselves have not changed, the language will be updated to reflect the changes to the worksheet (the new guidelines are expected to be released on May 22, 2018). The updates to the worksheet solves a few issues that arose from the use of the original worksheet.   There have been a lot of changes to support, both spousal and child support, in the last few months. While everyone is still picking over exactly what the  implications of the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are for alimony , we wanted to take time to review the current situation under the 2017 Child Support Guidelines.  Divorcing parties and practitioners alike should be mindful of these issues, even though a new form has been issued, because any cases for which child su...

In addition to the six lengthy proposed custody reform bills that we have reviewed over the past two weeks, there are six other proposed bills which would affect the resolution of custody disputes, although they do not make changes to the custody statute directly. In this post, we will summarize each of these proposals briefly and indicate how they could, at least in some indirect way, influence custody reform. H.2851 – Legislation relative to mediation of divorce cases involving children. This bill proposes adding a new statute to M.G.L. ch. 208: "SECTION 28B. Mediation of cases involving children". This new statute would allow the court to order the parties to participate in mediation in all custody disputes between parents (or grandparents). If mediation is ordered, all disputed issues (such as property division or alimony) will also be mediated. Parties are required to participate in said mediation "in good faith." However, the "mediator has ...