As a parent, your children are one of your top priorities. But supporting them financially, especially if you do not live in the same household, can be challenging. Will you be able to support your children and have enough to live on yourself? How can you make sure the money you pay for child support is really going for your kids’ needs? As family law attorneys, we get a lot of questions about North Dakota child support. Here are some of the most common:
If your ex has primary residential responsibility (physical custody) of your children, the answer to this question is almost always “yes.” The parent with primary residential responsibility is called the obligee, and the one who does not live with the children most of the time is called the obligor.
As the name suggests, the obligor is obligated to pay child support. North Dakota courts have made clear that child support is a duty that a parent owes to their children, not to the other parent. For this reason, you and the other parent cannot agree that you will not pay child support, even if you give the other parent something of value in exchange for this agreement.
You may need to pay child support even if you and the other parent share residential responsibility for your children. If you have equal custody, a child support obligation will be calculated for both of you, and then offset, with the person who has the greater obligation paying the difference between the two amounts to the person with the lesser obligation.
Unfortunately, not much. Your ex has some expenses that will relate directly to the children (their clothing, costs for lessons and field trips, etc.) and others that are necessary for the children’s well-being, but not exclusively about them (mortgage or rent, utilities, groceries, car payments, etc.) You are not entitled to an accounting of what your ex spends and what portion of your child support payment is spent on which expenses.
You may see that your ex has spent money on something that he or she would not have been able to afford if you were not contributing financially, and that may make you angry. He or she may be spending money on the children differently than you would. But unless the children’s needs are being neglected, you don’t have a say in how child support gets spent. If you truly believe the children’s needs are not being met, of course, speak to your attorney about your options to protect them.
In North Dakota, the obligor’s income is almost always the only one taken into account when calculating child support. The obligee’s income is considered only if it is at least three times that of the obligor, which doesn’t happen very often. It is also considered when parties have equal residential responsibility. Again, however, it’s helpful to remember that your child support payments are not for your child’s other parent, but for the children.
Failing to take the obligee’s income into account may not seem fair, but you may be comforted to know that in other states that do take the obligee’s income into account, because of other differences in the calculations, the outcome is similar.
Most likely. North Dakota child support guidelines specifically reference “overtime wages” as gross income for the purposes of child support calculation. However, if you do not receive overtime on a regular basis, counting overtime pay when calculating child support may not be fair; it could give you an obligation based on income you do not regularly receive. Let your attorney know about your overtime situation. If he or she can persuade the court that your overtime is atypical, it may be excluded from calculating your child support obligation.
No, and honestly, you don’t want to. The system is set up to protect both the obligor and obligee by tracking payments. What if you paid your child’s other parent in cash, and then he or she denied that you had done so?
In North Dakota, payments go through the State Disbursement Unit (SDU) if the child support order originated in North Dakota or if North Dakota is enforcing an order from another state. If you and the other parent try to do an “end-run” around the SDU system, you may wind up not getting credit for payments you have actually made.
Additionally, most obligors are subject to North Dakota’s child support income withholding provisions, where your employer will directly withhold your child support from your wages or salary and directly transmit the funds to the SDU so the SDU can then send them to the obligee. This avoids obligors having to remember to send payments in on time themselves.
If you have other questions about North Dakota child support, or have concerns about your particular situation, it is best to speak directly with an experienced child support attorney. We invite you to contact Fremstad Law to schedule a consultation.
© 2019 Fremstad Law
TERMS OF USE AND DISCLAIMER: Thank you for visiting the Fremstad Law Web site. Please note that the materials on our site have been prepared by us for general informational purposes and are not legal advice. We will not accept requests for legal advice over the Internet. You should not rely on any information contained herein in evaluating any specific legal issues you may have. Do not send us information about your legal issues until you speak to one of our lawyers and get authorization to do so. The firm does not and will not consider or treat any unsolicited e-mails or information sent to us, an attorney, or an employee of the firm by persons seeking legal advice or other non-clients to be confidential and the firm reserves the unconditional right to disclose or use any such unsolicited e-mails or information for any purpose. Your use of our Web site and/or sending e-mail to us or one of our lawyers does not create a lawyer-client relationship. A lawyer-client relationship is not created except by a written acknowledgment of such an engagement signed by a member of the firm. For your convenience, our Web site may contains links to other third-party sites. We do not endorse or verify the accuracy of information on such sites and are not responsible for the contents of any of these third-party resources. The inclusion of such link on this site does not imply the endorsement, recommendation or approval of that site by Fremstad Law.
