Calculating the child support obligation and elimination of family support

The bill creates a new defined term under the DCF rules for a “designated percentage,” to mean the applicable percentage of a parent's monthly income, or adjusted monthly income, that is available for child support. The “designated percentage” phrase is then used within the calculations for a shared-placement arrangement and circumstances of a serial-family parent, split-placement parents, and combinations of special circumstances.

The bill retitles the applicable DCF administrative code chapter from “Child Support Percentage of Income Standard” to “Child Support Standard.” The bill also removes the definition of the term “standard” or “percentage standard” from DCF's rules and moves a Note appended to the definition of “standard” in the DCF rules to the new definition of the “designated percentage.” The Note specifies that the standard is based on national studies and is adjusted downward to reflect costs incurred by a parent when a child is in the parent's care and costs to maintain a child's health insurance.

The bill moves the listing of the designated percentage amounts, and the standard that applies to a request for a deviation from the percentage standard, to be placed with and follow the shared physical placement arrangement formula under DCF's rules. The new section is titled, “Determining the child support obligation.” The bill also updates cross-references within the DCF rules to reflect the reorganization of the shared physical placement and designated percentage provisions.

In addition to the administrative code changes, the bill also changes the statutes to eliminate family support orders, providing that no new family support orders may be issued beginning on the bill's effective date. Family support orders issued before the bill's effective date would remain in effect and be subject to all provisions in current law that apply to family support orders, including provisions relating to calculating interest and the duties of DCF regarding application of payments received.

Under current law, family support is an alternative that combines the component parts of child support and maintenance in a single obligation, and is based upon the same criteria that apply to orders for child support and maintenance.

Family support payments are treated as maintenance payments for federal and state tax purposes, so that the family support payment amount is deductible to the payor-spouse, and taxable to the recipient-spouse. However, under s. 11051 of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, maintenance payments are no longer deductible by the payor-spouse and are not included in income to the recipient-spouse. This change applies to any divorce or separation instrument executed after December 31, 2018. Divorce and separation instruments modified after the December 31, 2018, effective date are subject to prior law unless the modification expressly provides that the modified agreement be governed by the new law.