How is child support calculated in Utah?
How long does child support last?
How is child support enforced?
How child support in Utah is calculated. I will explain it both accurately and simply, but even then, it can sometimes get complex. But don’t worry; I’m going to give you the link to the online child support calculator a later on in this article. I still encourage you to read my explanation here first, so that you will understand the policy behind child support first.
Utah uses what are known as statutory child support guidelines. Child support is almost always based upon Utah’s statutory child support calculation formula (there are situations where the court can deviate from the statutory guidelines, but that rarely happens).
Generally, each parent’s child support obligation is based upon both parents’ respective incomes, the number of minor children they have, and the number of overnights the children spend with each parent. Balancing these factors should, at least in theory, ensure that each parent has enough money to maintain the children’s lifestyle at the same level in each parent’s household.
Unless a parent’s income is orders of magnitude greater than the other parent’s income, the parent who has the children with him/her fewer nights than the other parent usually pays child support, and the fewer overnights the children spend with the parent, the more child support that parent pays.
But remember that child support is a factor of both the number of overnights spent with a parent and the amount of each parent’s income. This is why the parent who has a higher income will still end up paying some (albeit a small) amount of child support to the parent with the lower income even if those parents share equal physical custody of their children.
Here is the link to the Utah Office of Recovery Services (ORS) child support calculator.
Read the calculator’s instructions carefully, so that you understand the correct information to provide, so that you get an accurate child support calculation.
You will answer the questions in the calculator to determine how much child support you’ll have to pay or how much child support you will receive.
Make sure you use your gross monthly income, not your net. Child support is based upon gross income. And gross income is not limited to just your earned income. Gross income includes not only salaries, wages, commissions, royalties, bonuses, rents, gifts from anyone, prizes, dividends, severance pay, pensions, interest, trust income, alimony from previous marriages, annuities, capital gains, Social Security benefits, worker compensation benefits, unemployment compensation, income replacement disability insurance benefits, and payments from nonmeans-tested government programs.
Additionally, if you or your spouse is unemployed or under-employed, you can’t use that status to game the child support calculation. If you are unemployed or under-employed, the court can determine what you should be earning and “impute” that amount of gross monthly income to you in calculating child support.
How long child support can last. In Utah, child support typically lasts until:
- a child becomes 18 years of age or graduates from high school during the child’s normal and expected year of graduation, whichever occurs later;
o If a child turns 18 but does not graduate from high school, that does not result in child support payment obligations continuing unless and until the child finally does graduate; if the child is 18, is not disabled/unable to care for himself/herself, and the child’s normal and expected year of graduation has come and gone without having graduated from high school, child support ends.
- if the child dies, marries, becomes a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; or
- is legally emancipated by court order.
Child Support can, in rare circumstances, be extended to the age of 21 for the child, but that usually arises if and when a child is mentally or physically handicapped after reaching the age of majority (i.e., 18 years of age). I have yet to see a case where child support was ordered beyond the age of 18 for an able-bodied person of normal intelligence.
So for those of you who are wondering whether courts in Utah order parents to pay for college for their adult age children, the answer is, the courts can do it, but I have never seen it done personally. Even though college is generally not something that a judge will order parents to pay for their adult children, it is something the parents can agree will be ordered if they want to make that a part of their settlement agreement.
How child support is enforced. Unless the government enforces payment of child support, that leaves the government to take care of the children using taxpayer (welfare) money. So the government is highly motivated to ensure child support is paid, to enforce payment of child support.
Utah and every other state in this country has at least one government agency to help parents who are owed child support collect it. Utah’s Office of Recovery Services and the Utah court system can garnish wages, intercept tax refunds, criminally prosecute and jail delinquent parents, revoke their driver’s licenses, professional licenses and even their recreational licenses.
The government has agencies in place to assist parents in collecting child support so that children do not become welfare charges. While you certainly can hire an attorney to help you pursue the collection of child support, ORS provides child support collection help for little to no money. Why? Because helping collect child support often saves more money than it costs the government. To find out how ORS can help collect child support. Here is ORS’s website address: Office of Recovery Services – State of Utah Office of Recovery Services
We have other articles on the subject of child support on this site, and I encourage you to view those as well to help you better understand child support and all the forms it takes in Utah divorce and child custody cases.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
