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...

Asking why Section 3 is on the new child support guidelines worksheet is like asking why bad things happen to good people.  Everyone has a different theory and none of them are really satisfying. The 2009 Child Support Guidelines Worksheet had two sections which broke the worksheet down into an Income Section and a Calculation Section, with a resulting recommended child support amount.  The new 2013 Child Support Guidelines worksheet changes these two sections and the calculations, which he have discussed previously . In addition, the 2013 guidelines added a new section, Section 3 titled: AVAILABLE INCOME ABOVE $4,808 (If applicable.) In cases where the combined household income is less than $4,808 per week ($250,000 per year), Section 3 will show all zeros.  However, if the family income exceeds this figure, Section 3 displays the proportional amount that each party has left-over in gross income after using the first $4808 per week in combined income to calcu...