Best Landlord & Tenant Attorneys in Louisville, KY

Kentucky has recently made some changes to its child support guidelines. One of the changes is that Kentucky now has a self-support reserve which is the minimum income amount required to meet the basic needs of the payor parent before child support can be required from that parent. The reserve will vary depending on the number of children. The other change is that Kentucky’s child support law now factors in shared parenting time. Under the previous law, overnight stays weren’t factored in, and any deviations to the final support figure varied by judge and county. Now the calculation must consider overnight stays. If the payor parent has just seven more overnights at 153, the child support obligation is proportionally adjusted. The more parenting time one parent has, the more child support the other parent pays. Stated differently, the amount of child support one parent pays is reduced by the number of overnight visitations that parent exercises. A parent who does not exercise any parenting time overnights, therefore, is not entitled to any reduction in the child support amount. You can use Kentucky’s child support calculator to assess your fair share of support. Parents must share the child’s health and childcare costs, in addition to the amount established by the standards, and may have to fund other expenses, like extracurricular activities. Although the new law is more equitable, it takes a trained eye to properly account for all offsets and calculations.