Parents in California have many responsibilities as they raise their children. There are many different methods and ways to raise children, but generally the goal is to ensure children have their needs met and grow into good adults. In order to ensure the children’s needs are met, it is important that parents provide for their children financially. This is true whether parents are married, divorced or never married at all.
How parents may ensure the financial needs are met differs though when the parents are married or divorced. Married parents may have joint accounts and simply pay for their children’s needs out of those accounts. This is not true though if the parents are divorced or no longer together. So, to ensure that both parents continue to contribute financially, there is usually a child support order in place ordering one parent to pay the other one a monthly amount to use towards the children’s needs.
The amount that parents will be ordered to pay depends on a few different factors. However, the payments are meant to cover the same general expenses. These include basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. They also can include payments for health insurance premiums, uninsured medical expenses, child care, extracurricular activities, travel costs for visitation when parents live significant distances from each other and other costs.
There are many parents in California who may be divorced or in the process of doing so. There are many major decisions that must be made during the divorce process regarding the children. One of these decisions is child support. The child support amount is based on the parents’ respective incomes and the time they have with the children among other factors. Experienced attorneys understand the factors that are used to determine child support and may be a useful resource.
