Child Support

In this episode of I Do Until I Don’t, attorneys Martin Sliwinski and Leo Sokolov dive into one of the most common questions they receive: How does child support work in Illinois?

They explain how parenting time impacts support calculations, when and how child support can be modified and what happens after a child turns 18. The conversation also covers contributions to college expenses, how courts handle tax deductions and what’s included in monthly child support payments. Whether you’re just starting the divorce process or revisiting a long-standing order, this episode offers clear and practical guidance for child support.

Key moments:

1:30 – How does parenting time affect child support?

3:00 – If parenting time is equal, is child support zero?

3:55 – How long does a parent receive child support and can it go beyond 18?

5:10 – Does child support include expenses for college, extracurriculars or medical care?

6:50 – Can child support payment allocations ever change?

7:45 – What is a substantial change in circumstances?

9:15 – What does child support cover?

11:45 – How is child support calculated?

13:15 – Which parent claims their child or children for tax deductions?

Transcript:

Okay, I have a child support obligation. Can it ever change? Can it go up? Can it go down? Nope. Absolutely not. You’re stuck with whatever you got stuck with.

Hello, my name is Martin Sliwinski. I’m an attorney here at Stern Mendez. I practice in the domestic relations division, dealing with cases relating to families of all sorts. And this is my colleague here, Leo.

Yeah, nice to meet everyone. I’m Leo Sokolov. I’m also an attorney here at Stern Mendez and I do everything Marty does.

Perfect. Yeah. [laughter] And so, the name of this podcast is I Do Until I Don’t. [very clever name] Which is a very clever name penned by Mr. Marvin Mendez, who’s a partner here at the firm. [We’ll give him credit for that one.] Yeah. Well, I think it’s clever at least. And so, this specific session deals with “most popular questions”.

As attorneys, we have consults, we have clients, and they come in and they have these repeated questions over and over again. And so, I thought it would be helpful to share that information with the public so that these common questions can be answered.

So, today’s session specifically deals with the matter of child support. And so, one of the most popular questions, and I’ve devised the list of five, that were very carefully construed with a lot of data analysis. [A lot of scientific method that you just came up?] [laughter] No, I actually just pulled them out in my personal experience, and if you have additional questions, you can always add them as well.

But the first is, and I’ll pose this to you, Leo, in your practice: How does parenting time affect child support?
Okay, so yeah, that’s a very good question. I do get asked that quite often. So, right now, the way the statute is written is child su…[er] parenting time significantly impacts child support depending on how many overnights each parent has.

So, prior to the new statute being implemented several years ago, there was a statute that basically just had a percentage based on how many kids each party had and whoever was paying child support. There was a percentage of their income was being paid for one child was one number. For two children was two, three, four, and so on. And so, the parenting time didn’t really impact it.

But now that the statute was changed, and I think for the good, because it kind of reflects more of the realistic kind of situations people run into in day-to-day life, the parenting time does impact it.

So, the magic number that you’ll have, you know, if you hire an attorney, they’ll be talking about is 146 overnights. And the reason they talk about that is because once the paying parent, whoever’s paying the child support, hits 146 overnights or more, their child support will decrease. And the theory kind of behind that is the more parenting time the paying parent has, they’re spending more money on day-to-day expenses for the child. And so, instead of having to pay more child support to the other parent and have those expenses, they kind of offset each other.

So, you know, and it goes all the way up to, you know, a 50/50 parenting schedule where you have 182 or 183 overnights. And then, depending on the incomes, it could be a zero support order. It could be very minimal if the incomes aren’t, you know, drastically far apart from the two parties.
Okay. And I think a natural follow-up question that I receive in my experience is: Okay, well, if parenting time is 50/50, equal, so child support is zero? Well, not necessarily. And so, if one party is earning significantly and substantially more than the other party, let’s say one party, for example, is earning $300,000 a year, and the other party is unemployed. The court may still take into consideration that disparity in the financial resources and circumstances, and still order some sort of child support amount. The idea being is that part of the child support component is the party’s financial ability to provide for the resources of the child in their possession and control.

And this works the other way as well. You may be in a situation where you don’t have a substantial amount of parenting time and you’re also paying a substantial amount of child support. And so, I think that’s an important consideration to make as well.

How long does a parent receive child support for and can it go beyond 18? So, it’s a little follow-up.

Oh, so you know, most individuals come to me and they say, “Oh, when my child turns 18, child support is done.” And that’s not the way…exact way that the statute is written. The statute says: it is either when the child turns 18 or when they finish graduation, no later than the age 19. That is when child support terminates.

So, to provide a practical example, is if your child turns 18 during their senior year, but they haven’t graduated yet, the court will extend the support obligation until the date of graduation. Now, if they graduate and then they’re going to turn 18 later, the court will wait until their actual birth date.

But no event past 19. So, if the child is still in high school past 19, you’re not getting child support.

Correct. Well, there’s always an exception to the rule. That’s the one thing you learn about attorneys is that there are exceptions.

One of those would be children with severe mental disabilities or health concerns that would warrant a deviation from that duration. Again, this is not the day-to-day common case, but there are always those sorts of options.

Yep. And then is there different types of child support where it, you know, a parent who is receiving financial support for a child who was in high school or before the age of 19, if that child, you know, goes to college possibly or anything like that, is there an avenue for the recipient parent to receive some sort of additional financial support from the other side? Or to be required to contribute to any college expenses or anything like that?

Yeah. So, the statute provides for…section 513 provides for college contribution. And so, in Illinois, you know, parents still have an obligation to provide for expenses post high school. That may look like tuition, room and board, fees, books, supplies, and of the sort. There’s also extraordinary expenses. Those may include things such as extracurriculars. You know, if your child is a soccer star, then there are expenses that may be associated with that component. And so, the court will, not necessarily…not typically, award additional stipend or increase the monthly amount, but provide a percentage split as these additional expenses.

So, the court may say that when it comes to those soccer expenses, they’ll be divided on a 50/50 basis. Or, if the parties have a very disparate amount of income, it may be a 70/30 split, or a 60/40 split.

Other categories, other than extracurriculars, include extraordinary medical expenses—that includes dental and vision typically. There’s educational expenses, so expenses associated with school, high school, and so forth, as well as religious expenses. Those are the four major categories that the court have outlined for guidance.

Moving on to another question. [Okay. ] Which is, okay, I have a child support obligation. Can it ever change? Can it go up? Can it go down?

Nope. Absolutely not. You’re stuck with whatever you got stuck with. No, I’m being I’m being a little facicious there. There’s very little that I’ve run into that can’t be changed in divorce or family law. You know, a lot of these statutes, the way they’re written, they’re written in a way that allows for change because I think the legislature understands people’s lives change, their jobs change, and all of these things. So, the statute does provide for substantial change and circumstances that you have to prove in order to modify it. But if you can come to court and say, “Listen, here’s what I was making, as an example, 10 years ago when my child support was entered. Now, here’s what I’m making now, and I can’t afford to pay it.” Or, “the other party’s making more now, we want some more support.” You can come to court and ask for a modification of the support, but the caveat to that you need to show that there’s a substantial change in circumstances. So yeah, you can always modify the support obligation.

Okay, so Leo, what is a substantial change in circumstances?
If I’m making $1,000 more next year, is that a change?

Well, and this is where, you know, having an attorney is also important because, you know, the statute doesn’t have a list of things that says, okay, if you have this change, it is substantial and if it’s this change, it’s not. Right? So, a lot of it has to do with experience and going to court and, you know, some appellative decisions have been written where the courts kind of interpret what is a substantial change. So, you know, in your example, $1,000 of increase or decrease in income: highly like…unlikely to be deemed to be a substantial change in circumstances.

But, something that is substantial, like for example, you know, the paying parent, you know, god forbid something happens medically and they can no longer work, or they, you know, they can’t do the job that they were doing previously. And let’s say their income drops from, you know, a couple hundred thousand down to, you know, minimum wage or something like that. And some in that type of circumstance, I would say that would be a, you know, a good candidate for a substantial change finding by the court to modify the support downwards.

You know, other things also that—it’s not just financial right? It could be, you know, if parents have, you know, one type of, you know, parenting schedule, for example, that they entered into and now, you know, mom or dad got a job across…overseas and they have to take it and now they’re no longer, you know, here not exercising the same parenting time. If there’s a substantial change into the parenting schedule or decision making also kind of goes into that. So, if there’s any of those kind of things you can come in and modify. It doesn’t have to always be financial.

So, what does child support cover?… And well, let’s start with that.

Yeah. So, that’s a good question. I have a lot of clients coming to me and they say, “Oh, well, I bought, you know, pens and pencils for my child, you know, is that part of the child support component, or does there, is that an educational expense or what category does that fall into? How does it work?” So, the way that child support works is the court will provide a monthly amount and the expectation is, outside of the four categories that we outlined (extra… extracurricular, educational, extraordinary medical, as well as religious expenses), the monthly support obligation should take into consideration most of the other expenses. The haircuts, the clothing… I mean, in a lot of households, right, each household will maintain their own set of clothing for the children, you know, in the essence of a divorce. [Correct.] And so, you know, the court is not going to be interested in determining, you know, who paid for the paper, who paid for, you know, the video games, those components. The monthly support obligation is to take that into consideration. Now, that’s not to say that the court can’t deviate either upward or downward from that monthly support amount if it hears arguments as to why it should be different. For example, certain children may have different medical needs, increased medical needs. The court may say, “Okay, well, I’m going to increase the monthly amount in part to take into consideration that this child requires more assistance, more time, more attention, and so forth.” [Mhm.]

I think it’s also, and you kind of mentioned this but, you know, if you’re if you’re negotiating an agreement with another side, with your spouse, and you know, you have the base support and then these categories, extracurricular, school expenses and all that, you can agree to include certain expenses into those categories. So, for example, you know, school expenses, well, what does that mean? Does that mean, you know, prep classes for SAT and ACTs? Does it mean college applications—a limit on those? You can kind of negotiate that and put a certain amount, you know, maybe it’s two applications or one prep class per year for, you know, junior and senior year in high school. So you can, you can control that. You know, cell phone expenses, I’ve seen people agree to split cell phone expenses 50/50. You know, laptop expenses for school. So, if you are doing agreement and you have an attorney you can kind of bring these kinds of these things up, and kind of control and be more specific to your needs, and to your kind of lifestyle, and what you want to provide for the kids.

Okay, so I’m going to go to the primary question, which is: how do I calculate the support amount? How do I know how much I’m going to pay in support?

Okay, so the base support is based on each party’s income. We kind of talked—we kind of touched base on that. So, you know, the formula talks about net incomes. The statute is very clear on what net income is. And it, the simple answer is basically your gross income minus your required taxes and, you know, contributions to social security those kind of things. And so, the statute defines it, and then once we know what your net income is, we put it in the formula, look at those tables that I kind of discussed, and see what the child support for, you know, a pair of parents that make X amount of net income per month is. And then you find the number of, you know, children they have, and then you get a support amount, and then each party… then their percentage contribution to their combined net income is the percent the court kind of uses to apply to that child support number. That’s the hard way of describing it. Much easier way to do it is if you do hire an attorney who’s competent. Most people use online software, that we have. We put in your gross income. If you’re a W2 income earner we put that in. The software calculates the taxes for whatever given year you’re in. So, for example, for 25, the software will know what the tax brackets are. It’ll spit out a net number, and it’ll give us a child support amount. And then you can put in other factors like we discussed, you know, overnights every… at 146 or less overnights. If it’s less than 146, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the child support is going to stay the same. If you’re over 146, the software calculates that and offsets that amount based on the correct number.

And since you got one bonus question, I’ll take one bonus question as well, which is tax deductions. Who gets to claim the children? Right. Maybe one party doesn’t have any parenting time at all, but they’re paying child support. Do they get to still claim the tax?

Yeah. So, my experience is that if both parties are contributing to the children through child support and whatever the other categories are, you know, courts usually try to split those. So, if you have two kids, maybe the court lets each child be claimed by one parent and the other child by the other parent, and then if one child phases out, then they alternate. If you have one child, maybe you alternate that tax exemption every other year. If you want to get really creative, you can, you know, if you’re doing agreement, you can put in there that, you know, if one parent, if both parents are earning income that’s taxable or if it’s a tax benefit, then they alternate. But if you know if one parent doesn’t get any tax benefits from the alternating then you let the other parent claim it every year until the other parent gets a benefit, so that you’re maximizing, you know, the tax benefits to both parents. So, there’s different ways of doing it, but yeah, you know, you would share that in a way, as long as you’re both contributing to the child, you know, child support and all the other expenses.

Right. Even if you don’t have parent time, for example, or if you have equal parent time.

Yeah. Because you’re still contributing.

Yeah. Correct. And so I think this was very wonderful. Thank you for coming on.

It’s our first…first episode.

Yeah. And I plan on doing different topics, so that if maybe child support doesn’t apply to your case specifically because there’s no children involved, we’ll do a session as it pertains to spousal support, maintenance, alimony. We’re going to do sessions as to assets, right? Who gets the house and so forth. And so, there’s a lot to look forward to.

Sounds good. Looking forward to it, Marty.

If anyone ever has any questions that they want to share, you know, you can always reach out to our firm: Stern Mendez. Call the main office line and request either Martin Sliwinski or Leo Sokolov and we’d be happy to schedule a consult and answer any and all questions.

Yeah, I think maybe what we can do is if we get the same question that we haven’t covered, maybe in like 6 months we can do like a user submitted question or client submitted questions since the podcast started and kind of run through those.

Yeah, absolutely. Like a revisit a topic, right? And say, “Look, we’re getting a lot of these questions as well and we want to address them for everyone.

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