Calculating Child Support Is Simple
Video Transcribed: My name is Jason Lile, and I am an Oklahoma Men’s Rights Attorney. And if you’re wondering, I wanted to discuss briefly how child support is calculated in Oklahoma. It is not one of the easier topics we deal with, so it probably deserves some time and explanation. In Oklahoma, the State of Oklahoma puts out a spreadsheet. It’s an Excel spreadsheet, and it has formulas inside of it.
And there are a couple of pieces of data you need to put into this formula to spit out what we call a base child support obligation. The first and foremost is, how many children are we talking about? The second information is, what is your and your other parent’s gross monthly income? That’s gross. That’s before taxes, before benefits, gross. It’s equal treatment because both parties have to use that number, gross income.
The third thing is that you get a discount on child support or some sort of benefit if you’re self-employed. That information about how much of your income derived from self-employment should go in there.
The fourth thing I need to know if we’re going to calculate child support is whether you are paying child support for any other children that reside in your home or that you have physical custody of that don’t belong to the current party, the other parent?
Fifth, are there any ongoing medical expenses for the child or children? The sixth thing is, are there daycare expenses, who is paying them, and how are they paying them? Seventh thing, are they insured, and who’s paying the insurance premium?
All this information must be put into the child support calculator to render a fair and accurate number. Once that’s done, it should be obvious that a lawyer should help you with this because you could have that information misrepresented to your detriment, or the other party could be misrepresenting the truth about their financial situation or any one
of those factors I just mentioned.
And that could be to your detriment. So a good lawyer should be able to enforce some information submitted to your lawyer under oath so that you’re as sure as you can be that that information’s accurate.
But once you have a number spit out, the question often arises: do you have to follow it? And the simple answer is no. You, under Oklahoma law, have the right to ask the judge to deviate from that number that the calculator spits out.
Now, it’s important to know that the judge has to make a factual finding as to why he or she should do that. So you need to have a lawyer say, “Okay, this is what we’re going to come up with for the judge so that he or she can use that as their factual finding as to why we’re deviating from the number that the child support calculator came up with.”
And the last thing is, if your children are on some sort of public assistance, whether Educare, SoonerCare in their state of Oklahoma, et cetera, by necessity, the Department of Human Services is a party in your lawsuit at that point. And you need to know they must sign off on the calculator.
And also, when the child is on SoonerCare or Educare, there’s some money back to the state, and you cannot waive that. That’s called cash medical, and there will be cash medical charges to somebody in the suit to reimburse the state for SoonerCare and Educare.
The only way you get around cash medical is if both parties make so little money that the state doesn’t meet the threshold for cash medical. Child support is a complicated issue. When you have any questions or concerns or need a Child Support lawyer For Dads in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or a Child Custody Attorney for Fathers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, contact me at dads.law
