Difference between revisions of "Child Support Guidelines"

Often simply referred to as the Guidelines, the [http://canlii.ca/t/80mh Child Support Guidelines]', SOR/97-175, is a federal regulation, adopted by all of the provinces except Quebec, that describes the rules that the courts must apply when making an order for child support. The most important feature of the Guidelines is the child support tables which fix the amount of support payments according to the annual income of the person paying support and the number of support is to be paid for. The Guidelines cover every aspect of child support, including the calculation of income, how children's special expenses are paid for, the amount of support payable when the parents have the children for an almost equal amount of time and the amount payable when one or more of the children live full-time with each parent.

This page talks about the basic principles of the Guidelines, the sharing of special and extraordinary expenses, the calculation of income, imputing income, and the circumstances in which the income of a parent's or guardian's new partner may be taken into account. It also provides an example of the contents of a typical child support order.

It used to be the case that the party claiming support, the ''recipient'', had to jump through all sorts of hoops to show the amount of support the child needed and prove that the person being asked to pay support, the ''payor'', had the means to pay that amount. These days, the amount of a child support order or an agreement for child support is based on the amounts set out in the tables attached to the Child Support Guidelines. The Guidelines has generally reduced the amount of time and money that parents spend fighting about child support, whether they're in court arguing about an order or are negotiating the amount of support for a separation agreement.

This is, however, only a presumption, and can be challenged or ''rebutted'', as is discussed in the page on [[Exceptions to the Child Support Guidelines]] within this chapter.  In the vast majority of cases, however, the amount of child support payable is calculated using the payor's gross annual income at the time the order is made.

According to s. 7(1) of the Guidelines, the court must not only find that an expense fits into one of the categories listed above, but also consider

bearing in mind the special test for primary- and secondary-school education and extracurricular activities required by s. 7(1.1). Here's a helpful summary from a 2010 case from our Supreme Court, ''[http://canlii.ca/t/2dpzr Piper v. Piper]'', 2010 BCSC 1718:

Under s. 7(2) of the Guidelines, expenses which qualify as special and/or extraordinary expenses are shared by the parties in proportion to their incomes, after deducting any contribution to those costs made by the child or the government, through things like grants or tax deductions. The idea here is to look at the total pot of money available to the child — the income of the payor plus the income of the recipient — and to figure how much each party's share of that pot is, and then pay the child's special expenses according to each parent's share.

The cost that is being shared is the ''net cost'' of an expense, in other words, the amount that is actually being paid after any third party contributions have been applied to reduce the expense. Daycare costs, for example, are usually partly subsidized by the government with certain tax deductions. If $1,000 is spent on daycare, but the government chips in a $200 tax benefit, the amount of the expense shared between the parents would be $800, not the full $1,000.

According to Rule 5-1 of the [http://canlii.ca/t/8mcr Supreme Court Family Rules] and Rule 4 of the [http://canlii.ca/t/85pb Provincial Court (Family) Rules], when someone makes an application for child support, the payor or both the payor and recipient are required to disclosure their financial circumstances using court form called a Financial Statement. Financial Statements require each party to set out their income and expenses, and assets and liabilities. Certain income documents must be attached to a Financial Statement, typically:

#all Notices of Assessment and Reassessment received for the last three tax years,

#the party's most recent paystub, showing his or her earnings to date, or if the party isn't working, then his or her most recent WCB statement, social assistance statement or EI statement, and

Payments from WCB, Employment Insurance, CPP, Old Age Security and welfare all count as income under the Guidelines. If a party is receiving these payments as a temporary subsitute for employment income, the party's income may be assessed at his or her usual income. A temporary period on welfare, for example, won't entitle a payor to have his or her income assessed at that unusually low level.

Where a payor has suffered an unexpected loss, such as a corporate loss or an investment loss, or enjoyed an unexpected gain, such as from cashing in RRSPs or selling stock, the court has the discretion to decide to take this into consideration in setting the payor's income, and potentially not consider the loos or gain.

Parents and guardians usually move on with their lives after the relationship which produced their children has ended, meet new people and enter into new romantic relationships. Parents and their new partners are often concerned about how their relationship will impact on the parent's obligation to pay child support. The parent might be concerned to know whether the new partner's income will be added to his or her income in calculating child support. The new partner will want to know whether he or she is now on the hook for support and must contribute to the parent's payments or towards the parent's children.

Section 10 of the Child Support Guidelines allows parties to argue that the base amount of support set out in the Guidelines tables is too low or too high and would cause ''undue hardship'' if the table amount was paid. Payors will claim that the base amount is too high, while recipients will argue that it is too low. This exception to the Guidelines is discussed more thoroughly in page on [[Exceptions to the Child Support Guidelines]] in this chapter.

Section 4 of the Guidelines deals with parents who earn more than $150,000 each year. Under this section, the income (or lack of income) of a parent's new partner may be taken into account in deciding whether the formula gives a fair result. The calculation of support owing by parents with incomes in excess of $150,000 is discussed in more detail in the page [[Exceptions to Child Support Guidelines]].

Section 7 of the Guidelines allows for sharing of the children's special and/or extraordinary expenses between the parents, as discussed above. In figuring out how much a parent should have to contribute to these expenses, the court is required to take into account, among other things "the reasonableness of the expense in relation to the means of the spouses and those of the child".

While that is a good general rule, and one you can probably rely on, it is possible that a claim could be made against the new partner as a ''stepparent'' of the child under the ''[[Family Law Act]]''. The act says that all parents, guardians and stepparents are required to support their children, but s. 147 says that stepparents who are obliged to pay child support must have contributed to the support of the child for at least of one year. In other words, a new partner who marries a paying parent may have an obligation if he or she has contributed to the support of the child. Again, while this is technically possible, orders against new partners following the death of the paying parent are extremely rare.

#an order with respect to the exchange of income information, and

Separation agreements, like all family law agreements, have two types of statements. The ''recitals'' are statements that talk about the parties and their relationship that explain their background and why they signed their agreement. The ''operative clauses'' of an agreement are statements that say what each party has promised to do. The recitals to a separation agreement about child support would include statements like these:

==Page resources and links==