New Child Support Statute
New Child Support Statute
As of July 1, 2017, courts across Illinois have been calculating child support in a completed different way than they have for decades. No longer is child support a straight percentage of the non-custodial parent’s net income. To determine child support, we have to know how much each parent earns and how many overnights each parent has with their child(ren).
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) comes up with amounts that a child costs to raise, depending on the parents’ total incomes. HFS also creates an online calculator to determine child support. As long as you are willing to use the standard tax rates assumed by the calculator, you can plug in both parties’ incomes to receive the rate of child support.
However, the amount of time the child is with each parent can have an effect on the amount of child support due. If the custodial parent has the child for less than 220 nights per year, the shared parenting formula is applied and support can be substantially different.
The HFS “child support estimators” are here: https://www.illinois.gov/hfs/ChildSupport/parents/Pages/ChildSupportEstimator.aspx. One is for the public and one for professionals (attorneys, etc.). The same numbers apply whether living in Chicago, DuPage, or downstate.
The change from straight percentage support to the current method may be great for you or terrible or make nearly no difference. The biggest difference is that if you do not know the other parent’s income, you might be taking a great chance in seeking modification, as the outcome might be no better or worse than the current situation.
