Hi everybody!

Just a little background. Separated in November due to WS's A, laid off from my job in mid December due to failing computer industry. I've just gotten a new job, but until I get my sales territory built up I am taking a cut in pay of about 25%. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" />

I really need to talk to my spouse about reducing the amount of child support that I am going to have to pay. We share the kids 50/50 and I have been paying about $800 a month because I could afford it. Now I can't and want to reduce the amount without getting the lawyers involved. According to the state worksheets, I should be paying about $325 a month, but I don't want to put the children or my WW in too much of a burden (too much fuel for the fire if she decides to try and burn me or to give her too many excuses as I work for a reconciliation) if I don't have to, so I was going to try and get her to allow me to drop it to about $600 a month (i.e. the 25% decrease reflected by my loss of income).

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated on how to appropriately approach this.

I'm an attorney, but since I don't know what jurisdiction you're in, you should not take this as professional advice.

In my jurisdiction, any "substantial" change in the paying spouse's income is justification for an adjustment in child support. There are recommended % of Adjusted Gross Income for child support. This % is presumed to be correct. A judge must justify any deviations from this by relying on approximately 10-15 different factors.

Since you were already paying more than your the recommended amount, I don't think there would be a problem with you reducing your payments. This should hold even more true if you agreed to pay more voluntarily.

Again, I need to state that this should not be considered professional legal advice. You should always check with a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction before taking action.

<small>[ January 14, 2003, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: timbo_e ]</small>

Wild Horse,

I'm going to give you a little different angle. I'm presuming that you are not divorced yet and that you have some type of temporary order. I'm also assuming that you have legal counsel. I was faced with a similar delima in my divorce. Actually I was order to pay a ridiculous amount considering that the temporary orders gave us shared/joint custody. The rational was simple, the court felt that she needed the additional income temporarily to set up household, educate, job hunt, or what ever. Anyway, our trial kept getting postponed and I was shelling out way more than I could afford. I pleaded with my lawyer to go in and get this reduced. He refused on two issues:

1. Women and money - you may think she's a sweetie now but take her money and see how sweet she is.

2. Our judge was extremely conservitive and it would give the appearance that I was using joint/shared custody as a means to lower Child Support.

Anyway, I went along with my lawyer and when it came time for trial he was right. First off we ended up settling out of court, primarily due to the fact that I didn't touch the money. We settled custody prior to dealing financial issues. Though I'm currently paying about 20% over what my state's guidlines allow, my X still believes that she got screwed on her CS.

Granted there are women out their who truly care about the emotional well being of their children, there are also a lot of them that allow the $ sign to make life altering decisions.

Just some food for thought.......

BTW And yes, through-out our whole seperation my X had agreed to Joint/Shared Custody until she saw how much money she wasn't going to get and then the gloves came off. And quite frankley she admitted that too me. Granted we did end up settling, some men are not so lucky.....

not sure what state you are in, but in OHIO, they will only review a child support case once every three yrs unless your income changes by more than 33%. sucks,eh? good luck.