Divorce Support Forums: Need Input

[quote]I did complete the sheet(at least I think I did!) Also had to show proof of income when I completed all the paperwork.
Thanks for the tip about day care, and I never even thought about summer camp for when they do go to school full time.
I have been on the NJ child support web site and there is a calculator, so I am pretty sure what the support number will be. On the site they ask for the day care cost so I assume that is factored into the amount. But who knows.
Two girls - 3&5. [/quote]

I'm from NJ and it is factored into the child support. And those website calculators were over by a few hundred dollars, so I wouldn't go by them. Ask your attorney to calculate what the child support would be per the guidelines.

Another thing about the childcare costs, they are net of the tax benefit to you. You need to make sure that what they come up with as the tax benefit is actually what the tax benefit is. Childcare is capped at $3,000 per child. Since you have 2, that's $6,000. And then you only get to deduct a percentage of that.

And you need to come up with the whole year's cost of child care (this was an issue for me since I had one in school full-time and one in daycare full-time) and get the weekly amount by dividing the yearly amount by 52. Be sure to include any extra daycare (such as spring break and miscellaneous school days off) that you may need to pay. How I did this was I took what I paid weekly and divided by 5 to get the daily amount (which is what I pay the babysitter now) and then multiplied it by the number of days off of school where I wasn't off. And then I took 3 days off just in case they weren't used. I wasn't that far off (I ended up paying more than what was added onto child support, but not much). With a 5 year old, if you aren't already, you are dealing with a child who is in school (either half day or full-day), so daycare isn't as much. Except in the summer.

NJ allows modification every 3 years. And if there is a significant change in circumstances.

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