Modifying Child Support

How do you modify child support? Divorce attorney Kelli Hooper says that you need to take many factors into consideration when modifying child support.

Video Transcript:

The question is sort of twofold. The inquiry begins as to whether or not you have what I call a superior court order. So it's a regular order that was issued by a judge or whether the case is going through the office of child support services. For this particular question I'll assume that it's a superior court order. So you know when you look at the case caption as Mom vs. Dad or Dad versus Mom and then there was a child support number. Here in Georgia we use the standard of whether there's been a material change in circumstances in the case. And so in that particular case the word "material" actually means something. It means that there's been something significant that's occurred in either Mom's life or Dad's life financially that would impact their ability to either pay the current number or increase their ability to pay a another number that's higher.

Most people are surprised when they run worksheets when they're trying to do a modification and find out that that you know five dollar an hour increase the dad got at his job really doesn't move the child support number very much so I usually would encourage people to speak with an attorney or go online themselves, run any worksheet to see if your number is going to move at all. Based on the new numbers it very well may be that the number doesn't move very much at all. And that can help you make a decision about whether or not your case is ripe to file. The worst thing you want to do is pay $215 and $50 for service for a case and then get your child support number to move a dollar. Like that's just not good math.

So I usually encourage people to spend a little time figuring out whether or not if there will be any great benefit to you in filing for a modification.