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  • Increase/Decrease Child Support Guidelines

    In the Divorce Act, it states:

    Review and report

    28 The Minister of Justice shall undertake a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of the Federal Child Support Guidelines and the determination of child support under this Act and shall cause a report on the review to be laid before each House of Parliament within five years after the coming into force of this section.

    December 31, 2016 will be five years since the last review, I believe. How did you have any increase/decrease amounts regards to the guidelines, not income, included in your agreement? How did you word the guidelines increase/decrease?

  • #2
    Originally posted by Bellbaby View Post
    28 The Minister of Justice shall undertake a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of the Federal Child Support Guidelines and the determination of child support under this Act and shall cause a report on the review to be laid before each House of Parliament within five years after the coming into force of this section.
    They are talking about a review of the Act itself, that the FCSG are supposed to be reviewed five years after their creation, to evaluate their success. I wonder if that happened?

    Originally posted by Bellbaby View Post
    December 31, 2016 will be five years since the last review, I believe. How did you have any increase/decrease amounts regards to the guidelines, not income, included in your agreement? How did you word the guidelines increase/decrease?
    Reviews of individual agreements happen under completely different circumstances.

    Barring big changes in circumstances, CS should be adjusted annually, after tax time.

    Big changes in circumstances would include unusually large income jumps or decreases, changes of access time, unexpected big events, etc, which might warrant an immediate review instead of waiting for the annual adjustment.

    Comment


    • #3
      I think the question is more along the lines of "what happens if the methodology of calculation of the child support table changes"?

      Perhaps it is just my lack of imagination, but I am hard pressed to think of a change that cannot resolved by just looking at the tables every year. If the tables change, then they change. Hopefully they don't change, because there is no way that a change would go any direction but up, but if there is a change then all payors will be paying more.

      (My hypothetical big change scenario was the treatment of child tax credits, but I couldn't work out how that could cause a big problem, so I didn't use that example)

      Comment


      • #4
        Exactly Janus, that's what I was getting at. According to the Divorce Act they are to be "reviewed" every five years. The anniversary would be this year, December 31.

        Normal people would resolve it by looking at the tables. The other party in my case is difficult.

        And you're right - it probably will go up every time it's "reviewed". I'm a receiver, not a payor, and I think they are very generous (the guidelines).

        I'd expect them to always go up. But if they should ever go down, I'd like to know in advance but without my other party being forthcoming, I need to rely on the wording of the court order/FRO and that while nightmare.

        I hate being in this situation. One ex very fair, amicable, stayed far, far away from court, made our own lesser child support (it benefits the child for him to keep his money and our child not to be in a dump when he's with him,, etc,). Other guy is a nightmare so everything is by the book.

        Comment


        • #5
          There needs to be a complete overhaul of the child support guidelines. If you look at what I posted in the political section, these guidelines are about as bad as they could make them. I don't think they could have made them worse if they tried. One of the big flaws is them being non taxable to the recipient and non tax deductible to the payor. They need to be taxable to the payor and tax deductible to the recipient. The change was made not for the benefit of either the recipient or the payor but the federal and provincial government. Since we have a progressive income tax system (the more you make the greater percentage of tax you pay), this change saved governments millions per year. This has also caused immense damage to the shared parenting ideal. Since you get more money back in benefits by not having shared parenting, it discourages shared parenting. There are many oher reasons these guidelines are bad but it would take a 10,000 word essay to articulate it. As usual, lawyers and politicians (generally the same thing) are to blame for this mess..

          Comment

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