Child Support Lawyer in North Carolina for Your Case

North Carolina Child Support Guidelines

Child support in North Carolina is generally calculated pursuant to the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines. Per North Carolina law, the Child Support Guidelines are published by the North Carolina Conference of Chief District Court Judges at least every four years and govern child support throughout the state. In general, the Guidelines establish a presumptive range of child support through a child support calculator based on factors such as a parent’s income, insurance costs, work-related child care costs, certain extraordinary costs, and a child’s custody schedule. When you meet with one of our child support attorneys, they can discuss these factors with you to determine an appropriate amount of child support in your case.

Deviating from the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines

While the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines provide a presumptive amount of child support, not all cases follow the Guidelines when establishing child support. One instance where the Guidelines do not apply is to high-income families. Specifically, per the 2023 NC Child Support Guidelines, the Guidelines do not apply to families with a combined monthly gross income of $40,000 or greater. Another instance in which the Guidelines do not apply is when a court decides to deviate from the Guidelines. A party may seek, or a judge may choose, to deviate from the Guidelines in the event the presumptive amount of child support established by the Guidelines either exceeds or falls below the actual needs and expenses of the children in the matter.

In the event you believe a deviation is necessary in your case, one of our experienced child support lawyers can assist you with the process ,which will involve assessing the reasonable needs and expenses of your own children to determine an amount of child support that best fits your family.

Calculating Child Support in North Carolina

Whether child support is calculated per the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines or your case requires a deviation, you and your child support lawyer will need to assess a number of important factors, including your income, certain child-related expenses such as work-related childcare costs, extraordinary costs, insurance costs, and your custody schedule.

Income, Health Insurance, Work-Related Child Care Costs, and Extraordinary Costs

Establishing child support in North Carolina begins, first and foremost, with a consideration of the supporting parent’s and the other parent’s gross monthly incomes. In general, a parent’s gross income includes income from all sources, including employment income, business income, investment income, retirement income, Social Security benefits, unemployment income, and other sources, although some areas of income may be excluded. While some cases are as simple as calculating an annual salary or hourly wage, calculating income can be an exceptionally complex task in some cases, including when dealing with income for business owners and other self-employed parties.

In addition to calculating each parent’s gross income, child support takes into consideration costs incurred by each parent on behalf of the child, including the cost of health insurance, work-related child care, and certain other child-related expenses considered extraordinary costs. Extraordinary costs can include special costs for a child’s education, including private school tuition in some cases. Ultimately, the child support calculator will automatically apportion these costs amongst the parents based on the custody schedules and their incomes, which will ultimately impact the total amount of child support owed.

Custody Schedules and Child Support

An important consideration for determining who will pay child support and just how much is the custody schedule for minor children. The North Carolina Child Support Guidelines establish three different Child Support Worksheets that address different custody situations, ranging from primary custody, shared custody, and split custody. Ultimately, the amount of overnights a child spends with each parent can have a large impact on child support. For example, a non-custodial parent will be required to pay child support to a custodial parent with primary care in certain situations, no matter the income split, whereas that same parent might receive child support from the other parent depending on a different custody schedule.

Our team of seasoned child support lawyers can help you determine what factors will impact child support in your case and determine the extent of each parent’s financial responsibility.

What Does a Child Support Order or Agreement Include?

In addition to establishing which parent will pay child support and how much support will be owed, Court Orders as well as child support agreements establish other forms of financial support between parents and can even address certain issues, such as who can claim tax exemptions. An important area of financial responsibility to be addressed with child support is who will pay for health insurance for a child and how the parties should split uninsured medical, dental, vision, and other healthcare costs. In the event a parent is ordered to provide insurance coverage, they will generally receive credit for it in the ultimate calculation of child support. In the case of uninsured costs, costs may be split equally between parents, the parties may be required to split costs per their relative abilities, or one parent may even be required to pay for all of these costs. This same type of cost-splitting may also be applied to other expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring, and other similar costs, depending on the case.

Termination of Child Support in North Carolina

In North Carolina, child support generally terminates upon a child reaching the age of eighteen or graduating from high school, whichever comes later. For example, if a child reaches the age of eighteen but graduates from high school thereafter, child support would generally terminate at the time of graduation. However, there are some circumstances where a parent’s duty to provide support terminates later or even earlier, such as when a child becomes legally emancipated. Sometimes, parents choose to extend child support beyond what is required by the law in the case of college expenses and other child-related expenses. Regardless of your situation, it helps to speak with a child support attorney about when child support ends, given that the circumstances of one child may be different than those of another child.

Finding the right child support attorney depends on several important considerations. First and foremost, you need to be comfortable with the attorney you hire. You are going to make some important financial decisions in your child support case, and thus, it is important that you have a comfortable relationship with that attorney. At our law firm, we will schedule an initial consultation for you with one of our attorneys, not only so that you can meet with them to learn your legal rights and options, but also so that you can make sure we are the right fit for your case.

An important part of the initial consultation is speaking with your attorney about the approach you believe—and they advise—your case will need. Whereas some cases may be best served by a collaborative approach that focuses on determining child support outside of court, other cases may require filing and aggressively pursuing child support in court. Either way, it is crucial that you and your attorney are on the same page from the outset.

Given that child support is a financial consideration, a crucial conversation that you should have with your attorney at every stage of the case is how the costs of taking any sort of legal action weigh against the benefits of doing so. Oftentimes, it may be that you have a legal avenue we can pursue, but the costs of doing so might outweigh the benefit of what you seek to gain. The choice is ultimately yours to make in any given situation, but it is important to have conversations with your attorney along the way about these sorts of considerations. At Miller Cushing Holladay, we pride ourselves on having these sorts of cost-benefit conversations with our clients, given that we think it is a key part of having an open and well-informed relationship with our clients.