Child Custody And Divorce: Free Legal Advice
Child Custody And Divorce: Free Legal Advice
Child Custody And Divorce: Free Legal Advice
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Copies of the Michigan Child Support Guidelines are available for $5.00, prepaid. Make check or money order payable to the State of Michigan and send a request to:
Department of Management and Budget
Office Services Division
Publications Section
P.O. Box 30026
Lansing, Michigan 48909
Note: it is FAR easier to navigate through a nicely-bound softcover manual than it is to grope through these web pages. The State of Michigan is making these manuals available at virtually cost, and they are a good buy. Consider placing your order today, it will arrive two days later, they're very good over there with mail-order.
BUT, if you want to struggle through it, here is the entire manual, for easy download, in Word Perfect format:Click here to download
Here's how to use the child support guidelines:
1. Determine net income of each party, using the same standard (if we're going to use last years W-2 form, fine, but do it for BOTH parties. If we're going to use this years year-to-date earnings, fine, but do it for BOTH parties). Most judges will not consider using year-to-date earnings until May or June of any given year. If it's earlier in the year than that, the judge will prefer to use last year's W-2 form, because it picks up seasonal or occasional overtime, and averages it over the entire year.
2. Determine whether or not any adjustments need to be made for other children in the home, or for other children on other support orders, and make the necessary adjustments. Read the manual for how this works, don't email me with this stuff.
3. GO TO THE PROPER SECTION OF THE CHARTS One child charts, two children charts, three children charts, etc. It is most embarrassing to be talking about support for two children, grab the manual, and look it up in the three-children section, and announce a figure that is about fifty percent too high.
I, of course, have never done this.
4. Find the custodial parent's income across the top of the page, and then go down that column until you meet the row that corresponds with the non-custodial parent's income. Where the row meets the column, the number there is the support that will be ordered. The best description is that it works just like those milage charts on maps: you trace DOWN in the Detroit column, until you hit the ROW for Battle Creek, and the number at the intersection of the row and the column is the miles between those two cities.
5. Here's an example of support, for one child, when the CUSTODIAL parent has net weekly income of $130, and the non-custodial parent has net weekly income of $330:
See? The number there where the row meets the column, $84, is the amount that the
judge will order in this particular case. For further details, go to the
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