Partners in Family Law can help you:
- Calculate whether and how much regular child support you or your partner may be required to pay;
- Determine whether you or your partner may be required to make particular payments to cover your child’s schooling or other particular expenses;
- Work out whether it would be to your or your child’s benefit to reach an agreement with your partner about child support;
- Draft and advise you about a Binding Child Support Agreement to ensure that can be enforced in the future;
- Advise you about setting up a maintenance trust for your child and the possible taxation benefits to you.
Child support is payments of money made by one parent to the other. The amount to be paid depends on how you and your partner care for your child; your children’s ages; your and your partner’s incomes (including PAYG, overseas income, investment income, trust income/dividends, tax losses brought forward etc); and whether you or your partner have other dependents.
There are many forms of child support, including: regular, ongoing payments and lump sum payments as part of a property settlement. In some circumstances, we can help you to establish a child maintenance trust which can provide taxation advantages.
We will also advise you on your entitlements or responsibilities to cover particular expenses for your children such as: private school fees (tuition and other costs); health insurance; out of pocket medical expenses; extra-curricular activities (and equipment and uniforms); and computer expenses. If these expenses and any other child support is different to the regular child support assessed by the government’s Child Support Agency, then they will need to be included in a Binding Child Support Agreement to be legally enforceable.
Partners in Family Law are experts in negotiating child support arrangements and at advising about and drafting Binding Child Support Agreements. We can also advise you on whether and how you can make changes to these agreements in the future.