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  • CS when 50/50 shared custody?

    Trying to figure out why I would need to pay stbxw CS for our one child (9yrs old...married 13yrs) when we will be in 50/50 shared parenting arrangement. Mediator says that we should use offset of Ontario Tabled amounts for CS. Just a simple subtraction of each of our numbers. Plan was to use SSAG to move closer to equalized incomes so why the heck would I give her something termed Child Support if neither of us is the "Custodial Parent"? Gives her about $200 tax free. If this is zero'd in the software, her SS will go up to ensure that she is within the 40-46% range which I have no problem with as that was the plan... Mediator says "that the courts want to make sure that the child is taken care of". ??!??!??! If we are moving towards almost equalized INDI, then I am at a loss as to the logic of paying her CS.

    Anyone else with experience in this?

  • #2
    Hi...i am going through the same thing...i have shared custody and am still paying my ex girlfriend $800 a month..and i pay 75% of all other costs ...because i have a job and she doesnt....but in fact she makes nearly as much as i do (her gross to my net) but doesnt get taxed nearly as much., i am not allowed to use my daughter as a dependant at tax time.. wtf????? if you have a look at www.childrenwith2homes.ca
    this might help you out and give you some hope....i used to pay my ex $900 a month when she had a job...After tax and child support i took home around $50k and she took home...with child tax and childsupport and her job about $45k....mostly tax free....how does this make sense.....the goverment has some major wires crossed!!!

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    • #3
      Will have a look at that site. I am finding that nothing involved in this process follows common sense.

      Thanks!

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      • #4
        Nathank situation may be different that yours because he didn't mention SS.

        First, I hate SSAG! I fortunatley don't use it. Why should my ex's and I future financial success be tied together when we are not married?? Now if you use SSAG to do a first calculation for SS and then never change it when one of your incomes change (which has nothing to do with the other person who is NOT your spouse), then SSAG could be good as a calculater if you want to do a NDI type calc.

        Anyway, I don't have the calculator BUT in my case we calculated SS baesd not on NDI, but purley on compensation for damage to her career. Our SS does not consider CS which we calculate after (but there was a trick to that), and SS will never change based on what happens after we split - it goes down every year until the assumed damage to her career is done, but what actually happens is up to her and does not effect me - simple and a a clean break! So then I thought I would use our incomes AFTER SS transferred (mine lowered, hers raised) to calculate CS, which is of course mathematically fair, but both my lawyer and her lawyer said that the judge would simply want to see CS based on line 150, end of story. I have 50/50 custody by the way and the CS method is to subtract our CS table amounts from each other, and I pay her the difference. CS is adjusted automatically each year based on our tax returns. Anyway I didn't argue the stupid point but managed to convince my ex that we determined SS first and then CS, but given that we are force to make it look like we determine CS first, we had to adjust SS accordingly to make it all come out the same - stupid and a pain in the butt, but mathematically it is the same.

        Now in your case it seems that you are using SSAG and NDI splitting. Again the same concept applies, you FIRST have to calculate CS, then you calculate SS which should consider your CS payments.

        In the end, if you are targeting a certain NDI, that is fine, but if you say 40% for her, and 60% for you, then the SSAG calcualotor won't do that I think because it first balances child income in the two houses as equal, and then tries to give you the 40/60 split AFTER that, which in the end results in a different number closer to 50/50.

        Simply put, if you both really want 60/40 split of NDI ignoring the kids, then you have to figure out what that $ number would be and then input a different NDI split to the SSAG calculator to achieve the result you want.

        I have not used SSAG, but this is my somewhat educated opinion.
        Last edited by billm; 05-21-2009, 10:46 AM.

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        • #5
          Am i ever glad that we weren't together long enough for me to have to pay ss..it sounds like a pain...as well as another scam...hows that for equal rights!!! 99% of the time the woman is the better off person in a divorce or break up!!

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          • #6
            Thanks for the replies to this. Very interested in your situation billm and I thank you for your detailed post. I have read many of your other posts and beleive that your input to the forum is extremely valuable and valued.

            I am curious how you were able to determine "damage to her career" as I would think that would be very subjective and a contentious issue to nail down. How were you able to do this and what methodology would you recommend? SS is such an insanely complex issue to reach any form of consensus between the payor and payee. One always thinks it's too much and the other wants more. Recipe for constant litigation, imho.

            Also trying to understand your comment about the SSAG calculator first "balancing the child incomes". so that the split is closer to 50/50. All of the calculations in the SSAG are akin to voodoo magic. Is there another way of explaining this for my thick head to understand.

            Thanks.

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            • #7
              In my case damage to her career was very easy to calc since she is an RN, which is a unionized job. If she had not stayed home with the kids while I worked (a decision we both made easily), she would be at the top of the pay scale for a nurse. When we split we decided 50/50 custody and both would of couse work, again an easy decision for both of us. She went back to school for a year to recertify her credentials which had lapsed. During that year we did not split anything, she spent money from a joint line of credit so we went into some debt but this was shared equally because we split assets and everything after she started working full time.

              When she started working full time, she was granted some level of experience according to the unionized RN pay scales, but she was not where she would have been had she never quit as an RN. So how much less she was earning was terribly easy to determine. As for my income, she was not 'the wind beneath my wings', I make simply what would had I never married, so there was no damage nor boost to my income due to our union.

              Now the finer points...lets say that she makes $20k less than she would have if she stayed working. I of course don't pay her this amount as that would mean that I alone would be taking the burden of the damage, so we decided to split the $20K according to our relative actual incomes, lets say 60/40, so I pay 60% of 20K to her in SS, but of course this is only the first year as she should only take a certain number of years to achieve top pay scale. Each year the damages is reduced, and so does the SS amount, until after some set years it is done. The SS is deducted from my taxable income and added to hers which makes sense because the 20K damage is pretax dollars as was the ratio used to calculate my percent to pay of the damage. Note - All numbers I mention here are made up for this post for the sake of my privacy, but are realistic.

              The other point is that the SS yearly table we calculated is FIXED, because it was based on what happened WHILE WE WERE MARRIED. If I make more, if I make less, and same for her, the SS payments follow the table we created and do not change BECAUSE WE ARE NO LONGER MARRIED, we are independent. Now frankly if she completely stops working due to illness etc, because we do have shared custody of young kids, I realistically would probably have to address increasing SS while the kids are still young, but I don't mind that. But if she is lazy or stupid, (she is not), then I don't have to support her. Note that CS is based on what we actually make each year so the kids will be taken care according to the present, because they are still our kids in the present. The beauty of it, as I see it, is that this SS treats us as individuals who HAD a relationship. It relies on an ex seeing it that way. I make more money that she does, she has to think that it is okay, but I would make more than her if we both stayed single and continued along our career paths that were in motion when we met. She benifitted from that income while were together, got half of everything that income bought, and now that deal is done.

              Now in most cases I would think that it would be harder to determine income damage and in some cases the damage can be permanent so SS has to reflect this. But I think it has a high value to do it this way as it brings closure and it also places income responsibility directly on the shoulders of each person, which is right were it belongs (or else communism would have worked!).

              To address the SSAG calc. My point, which was pure speculation, was that if you tell it to split NDI 60/40 and you have no kids, it works. If you have kids and 50/50 custody, the result is different because it wants to first even out money for the kids available in both households and THEN split the rest of the NDI 60/40, which would be a different result than the no kids scenario. That is my guess as to what you experienced.

              Remember that you can come up with any agreement you want, but to be legally binding it has to be reasonable and has to clearly support the kids and to do this it seems you first simply use the CS tables, and then you can figure out the rest.

              Okay I think that may have been my longest post!

              BTW, my post may reflect that all things went smooth, but we had the usual lawyers involved, stupid hostile lawyer letters asking for the moon (from her two lawyers - I only used a lawyer once, and that was for advice only) etc...in the end we did not us lawyers that much, except to actually split the assets. So far I think that all things considered we did well, and we did really well by the kids and kept it away from them. I think a lot of the problems we had was her reasonable fears associated with such huge change to her life (hey, wasn't my idea). My life has not changed any where near as much as hers, so I think her fears of going it alone and working a job as demanding as RN didn't help at first, but the more independent she became and secure in her job the better things went.
              Last edited by billm; 05-22-2009, 02:15 AM.

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              • #8
                Very clear now bill. Very much appreciate the response. It will be more difficult to prove the damage to her career (if there was any) but I agree with your well though out position on making an agreement that effectively ends things. My stbxw is very motivated and making good money. She would not have made anywhere near what I make but has enjoyed the benefits of that for the last 13 years. And now she wants out..her decision. More mediation to follow but I believe that your statement about both parties agreeing to this in principle (and without lawyers stirring the pot) will be key.

                Many thanks again.

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