There Are Ways to Mitigate That Liability
Video Transcribed: Can I Waive Child Support? My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am an Oklahoma father’s rights attorney here with dads.law, and I want to talk to you about whether or not you can waive child support in, either a divorce decree or a paternity decree.
The short answer is not really. The long answer is though that there are ways to mitigate that liability, and that there are things you can do to make sure that the cost is at a minimum. I can tell you, that in Tulsa County, judges in Tulsa county will not sign a decree that purports to waive child support. They won’t do it.
They always require some kind of a calculation by the guidelines, and will generally follow the guidelines unless you have a specific reason, which has to be reflected as a finding if it’s in agreed order, as to why you’re going to deviate. That’s, so you can’t just wave it.
Now, you can wave arrearages, provided that certain rules are met. That can be waived. There’s a caseload directly on point and parties can agree to waive arrearages in paternity or a divorce.
Now it does get complicated if DHS is a party, but again, you can waive arrearages, but there will be some kind of child support payment entered prospectively.
Now, if you want to keep child support to a minimum in a co-parenting arrangement, you can arrange it in such a way on the schedule, where there is a, where it works out to a nominal amount of child support.
If you each have approximately the same number of overnights, that will reduce, which triggers the parenting time credit, which will significantly reduce the amount that the obligor pays to the obligee.
That is, the payor pays the payee. So, the easiest way is to do that. Also, one thing that does sometimes help, in terms of keeping child support liabilities to a minimum, is making sure that incomes are correctly entered or that we have correct imputation.
There’s a couple, there’s a number of different rules under Title 43 that deal with how that, how you determine each person’s monthly income. Generally speaking, it’s whatever you earn in a month, whatever she earns in a month.
Now, if your income changes, that can be averaged out. For example, if you work a commission-based job where your income can be really high one month and really low the next, then you might want to look at doing a six-month or 12-month average on that to get a fairer picture. But there are, there are some things you can do to mitigate that liability. However, the court’s going to enter it.
Now, one other thing to keep in mind, assuming of course, that the state is not a party to the proceeding, if you are the one being paid and you choose not to really aggressively enforce that, you’re not under any particular duty to enforce it.
Now mind you, if you’re on the other side of that, you should be careful, because she may not be enforcing it now, but if she gets mad at you later and decides she wants to screw with you, if you owe a large debt in child support, she could have a problem, and statutory interest does apply. But in theory, you’re not under any legal obligation if DHS is, not in the picture to enforce that obligation. You can, or you cannot enforce it.
So, that’s something else to keep in mind. If you have questions about any of that, if you ever need a Tulsa child support attorney or a Men’s Child Custody Lawyer in Tulsa Ok, you can find one at Dads.Law.