Adjustments

Child Care - Work Related

This entry is for child care expenses related to a parent's employment. See CRS § 14-10-115(9).

By default, the application will calculate the Federal Child Care Credit for the parent having the child “most of the time.” Only one party is entitled to the credit.

There are federal tax law limits on the amount of the credit. The limits relate to the amount of income, the age of children and the number of children for whom expenses are incurred. These limits are observed by the application.

See also IRS Form 2441 which may be useful to resolve any dispute. IRS Form 2141 is available on the IRS web site. For tax year 2021, H.R. 1319 - American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 includes an updated calculation. This change reverted back to the 2020 numbers in 2022.

Child Care - Education Related

This row is for child care expenses related to a parent getting an education. See CRS § 14-10-115(9).

This expense must be entered as a separate item because the federal child care credit applies only to child care expenses related to employment.

Health Insurance

Include only the amount of the premium that is attributible to the children who are to be the subject of this Support Order. See CRS § 14-10-115(10).

Use the children's per capita share of the total cost if the actual amount is not available.

If a parent's spouse provides insurance directly or through employment, the cost of such insurance should be treated the same as if paid for by the parent.

Extraordinary Medical

This entry is for uninsured expenses in excess of $250 per year. See CRS § 14-10-115(10)(h).

This entry can also be used to allocate or to describe who pays all insured deductibles and co-payments.

Other Expenses

This entry should include expenses for special or private school and expenses for transportation between homes. See CRS § 14-10-115(11).

Effective July, 2020, this entry should also include public school mandatory fees.

Transportation expenses can include intrastate or interstate expenses of an accompanying parent if the child is less than 12 years of age.

This expense has been interpreted to include "reasonable and necessary education expenses based on the child's standard of living and additional needs.

Items Reducing Need

Include amounts (child income or any other item) that actually diminish the basic needs of the child. See CRS § 14-10-115(11).

You are not required to deduct the entire amount of child's income if a part of that income does not reduce actual need.

A case can be made for the proposition that this entry can be used for Social Security income received by or on behalf of a child if the benefit is based on the disability of the "custodial" parent.

Maintenance Adjustments

Rarely Used

The following adjustments apply to the Maintenance calculation and are rarely used.

To determine income for the purpose of calculating maintenance, the maintenance statute requires you to include in income all pension payments and benefits unless those payments and benefits have been previously divided as part of a property division in this case. Assuming that all pension payments and benefits have been included in income in the Income section above, this entry allows you to reduce that income to adjust for such property division related amounts, and to do so before calculating maintenance. See CRS § 14-10-114(8)(c)(I)(H).

An income increasing adjustment for “trust distributions” can be made in this entry, if you think it is required because, perhaps, such distributions were not already included in income for determining child support. See CRS §14-10-114(8)(c)(I)(L). The Child Support statute requires that "trust income" be included in income, but it does not mention "trust distributions". We leave it to you to decide if there is a meaningful difference from the standpoint of the recipient and whether to use this entry.

Generally, neither the child support statute nor the maintenance statute call for including undistributed retirement account earnings or gains in income. See CRS § 14-10-114(8)(c)(II)(E). However, if a distribution could have been taken without an early withdrawal penalty, the amount that could have been taken can be considered as income - always for determining income for maintenance purposes - but only sometimes for purposes of determining Child Support. CRS § 14-10-115(5)(a)(II)(E) After your consideration of the relevant statutes, we leave it to you to decide whether to use this entry.