Child Support and 50/50 (Shared) Child Custody

It is a myth that equally shared physical custody will eliminate the child support obligation in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In fact, the Obligor with shared physical custody pays MORE than a non-custodial parent. There is a false premise in the guidelines that caps the obligation to the obligee when both incomes are equal. The “equal income” premise is false because the Obligor is not credited with the same expense for the same shared time with their child(ren). The code was written to address the Custodial/non-custodial situation and the deviation is just a patch to the idea that the parent making less money gets support.

The support calculation for equal shared custody, in summary:

The Custodial/non-custodial calculation is followed with some consideration for substantial time with the “non-custodial parent. The support obligation amount is determined from the parents combined income, after taxes and acceptable deductions, from the PA child support schedule. The amount of child support is determined by multiplying the percentage of income for each parent by the amount determined on the child support schedule. Then a percentage deduction is applied for the event of equally shared custody, capped at 20%. If the Obligor parent has the child(ren) 50% of the time the maximum credit is 20%. There is no explanation for this minimal reduction. The parent making more money (the Obligor) has their percentage of income reduced 20% for the purpose of determining child support obligation in Pennsylvania.

Example: Presuming both parents have shared custody, father makes 60% of the combined net income (mother is at 40%). The schedule for the sake of discussion dictates that the child support obligation for a month is $1000. Father’s percentage of income is reduced by 20% to 40%. Therefore, Father and Mother are responsible for 40% of the $1000 monthly child support - $400 each. Father pays mother, $400 per month. In other words, it costs $800 to support the children for the half of the month that mother has them.

My question is: Where does the $800 come from for the other half of the month when Father has custody of the children???? In reality, father is not paying $400 a month, he’s paying $400(to mom) + $800(for his children during his time) = $1200/mo. Why does it cost the mother $800 per month and the father only $200 a month for the same amount of time with their child(ren)?

Again, the premise of a cap limiting the obligation to "equal" income in both households is FALSE because the proper credit is not applied to both parents with EQUAL custody time.

Following the logic of the child support calculation, father would be paying $1000 a month for support if he didn’t have shared custody. Since he does have shared custody his real burden is $1200 a month, presuming that it really does cost $800 per half month to support his children as dictated by the child support schedule.

By federal law, each State must review their rules for calculating child support every four years. Pennsylvania did this is 2004 and the Domestic Relations Procedural Rules Committee generated Recommendation 67. Recommendation 67 set out to fix the above problems and in a draft form was made public for comment. In part it stated:

“As part of the review process that resulted in the 1999 amendments, the committee considered the practices of several other jurisdictions and ultimately selected a method which gave some recognition to the shift in child-related expenditures that occurs when the obligor spends a substantial amount of time with the children. While recognizing that it was not a perfect solution to the problem of establishing support obligations in the context of substantial or shared custody, it was preferable to the diverse offset methods which had been developed by local courts. Its chief advantage was that it provided statewide uniformity and avoided a sharp reduction in the obligation at certain thresholds. At that time, the committee was unaware of any existing model that did not create some “cliff effect” at some level of income.

Nevertheless, there were many critics of the method and the committee listened carefully to their concerns. The committee continued to study the issue and examine other models. The committee learned that Pennsylvania’s guidelines gave less credit to obligors for increased time with the children than other states. As a result, the committee recommended the adoption of a model similar to one that has been used in other states for several years."

The “cliff effect” mentioned above is the fact that in cases where the salaries of the parties were close, there would be no child support. The recommended "model" mentioned in the last sentence of the last paragraph was rejected by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania without comment or explanation in September 2005.

(it is the current PA Supreme Court's opinion that income in each household should be equal. I read about a case where Father$$$ had the children nine months of the years and Mother had three months inthe summer. Father $$$ was ordered to pay Mother a very large sum of money to allow Mother the same household that Father had for the children.)

The final draft of Recommendation 67 was submitted in secret to the Supreme Court of PA in October/November 2004 where it was reviewed in secret until the end of September 2005. A modified version of the Rec. 67 was incorporated in to the code, all the sections amending support in equally shared custody situations were missing without explanation. It came and went like a whisper. Few knew (by design), fewer cared

I could talk all day on this subject. My suggestion to you - MOVE TO DELAWARE. The laws are fair there.