Updating Child Support

Ohio's child support laws severely need updated. Of the many issues with the current child support laws, it uses financial data from the 1980s to calculate current support obligations and there is no allocation, absent the judge's discretion, for the time children spend with each parent and how that should affect child support.

For instance, a parent could be ordered to pay the full child support amount despite the fact he/she has shared parenting and the child 50% of the time. The court is not required to give a deviation for the additional time. Think about it: a parent could have a monthly child support obligation of $1,000 - which is to help provide for the child while he/she is with the other parent - but that same parent has the child 2 weeks out of the month and is responsible for food, shelter, etc, during that time but still pays the other parent $250 per week while the child is not with that parent. This creates a financial incentive for one parent to agree to shared parenting and equal parenting time but not agree to a child support deviation - a judge would then have to determine a child support obligation and the judge is not required to deviation for the additional time with the paying parent.

Several years ago I had such a case - my client was ordered to pay the child support and there was no deviation granted for the additional parentign time my client had. We objected to the decision and the trial court then increased the child support obligation. We appealed the decision and ultimately lost. We lost not because the court agreed with the child support order or even thought it was appropriate, we lost because decades of precedent had established judicial discretion in determination whether or not to deviate child support and the judge did not abuse her discretion. Stare decisis was not my friend that day.

For the past couple of sessions, legislators have introduced bills to modernize the child support laws but they usually fail to gather any traction - sometime they don't even get a hearing. Admittedly, I have not read the complete bill being proposed but based on the summaries I have reviewed I am not convinced the current proposal will fix all of the problems with the current child support laws. But any modernization and update will surely be an improvement.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/02/ohios-child-support-system-everyone-agrees-its-broken-but-fix-has-taken-25-years-and-counting/918782001/