Child Support Adjustments/Mandatory Deviations

Work Related Child Care is defined as an expense a parent must incur in order to facilitate his or her employment, education, or vocational training. These expenses must be included in the child support calculation, unless they vary from year-to year (explained herein). Before an Adjustment based on these expenses will be approved by a court, the judge must determine that the expenses are appropriate to the parent's financial abilities and to the lifestyle of the child, if the parent and the child are living together. If these expenses are deemed appropriate, they will be reflected in the child support calculation on the Child Support Worksheet. They will cause the Basic Child Support Obligation to be lowered or raised depending on the situation.

If childcare is provided free of charge or if a parent's childcare costs are being subsidized by a public assistance program, the value of those services will not be included in the child support calculation as an Adjustment. Only the amount of childcare expenses actually paid by the parent will be included in the child support calculation as an Adjustment to the Basic Child Support Obligation. As mentioned above, a Work Related Child Care expense is normally included in the Child Support Worksheet, but Georgia law does allow a variable childcare expense to be handled outside of the worksheet by each parent paying a pro-rata percentage.

The Basic Child Support Obligation is often impacted by either parent paying Health Insurance Premiums for the minor child(ren). The parent paying Health Insurance Premiums will receive credit in the Child Support Worksheet for the yearly amount paid for the child(ren)'s health insurance. Similar to the Work Related Child Care expense Adjustment, only the amount the parent actually pays will be considered in the Basic Child Support Obligation. If the health plan which covers the child(ren) covers multiple individuals or family members, only the portion actually attributable to the child(ren)'s insurance expense will be included in the child support calculation.

The Parenting Time Adjustment is a mandatory adjustment that must be taken into account when calculating child support. It was designed to use a mathematical formula to decrease the amount of child support that the noncustodial parent must pay by taking into account the child-rearing expenses incurred during that parent's court-ordered parenting time. The Parenting Time Adjustment takes into account the amount of time the parent spends with the child/children. It balances this amount with the presumptive amount of child support. If it is determined that the presumptive amount of child support is too high, given the amount of the time the parent spends with the child, the presumptive amount of child support may be adjusted to reflect this fact. The thinking behind this adjustment is that if a parent physically has the child for more time, they will likely incur more child rearing expenses.

The Low-Income Adjustment is a mandatory adjustment that must be taken into consideration when calculating the child support amount. The purpose of the Low-Income Adjustment is to decrease the child support amount based on a parent's low-income (if applicable). The Low-Income Adjustment is no longer discretionary (meaning a judge or jury could use their discretion to decide if it was applicable). The new Low-Income Adjustment attempts to use mathematical precision to create a precise and predictable downward adjustment. The Low-Income Adjustment achieves this by using an accompanying low-income adjustment table.