Entering information to Calculate Child Support in Family Law Software transcript

this video explains how to enter child support and maintenance in family law software we're going to use as our test case software in the state of Illinois but it's pretty similar in every state to begin we go to the client info Tab and select the first link on that tab which is support and maintenance data you want to enter the information here on this page and not just jump to the guideline worksheet because when you enter it here not only does it fill in the numbers for the guideline worksheet but it also fills in numbers for the financial affidavit and calculates the all important tax calculation when you go straight to the guideline worksheet it won't do that and what we're going to do now is look at each section on this screen the top of the screen will typically have a couple of check boxes relating to the deductibility of alimony spousal maintenance it will always be checked to indicate that it is not deductible for federal tax purposes and the check for state tax purposes will depend on the state now we look in the bulk of the screen and there are several sections each indicated by a drop down and we'll go through these sections one at a time the first section is children so let's open that section and if we haven't entered any children yet we type the number of children and then we click this button to have the software enter all of those children now we can enter the children's names and the birth dates of the children which parent is what Illinois calls the majority time parent some states call this the custodial parent and which child is claiming the tax exemption the software will then calculate whether the child is of eligible age in this state but if the child is emancipated early for some reason you can clear this checkbox if the child is disabled in some way and is remaining independent later than the typical eligible age the software will clear the checkbox but you can check it again this next check boox is very significant it specifies whether the child is a child of the relationship in many states there are special calculations for children who are not children of the current relationship they may be children of other relationships who live with the parties and clearing that checkbox alerts the software that this situation applies in this case the next columns relate to overnights you can enter different numbers of overnights for different children also there's an overnight calculator here so I can enter let's say two overnights per week plus an additional two overnights on a monthly basis plus an additional five holidays and the software will calculate the number of days that that represents and the percentage that that represents and when you click okay it will carry that number right into the overnights box so that's the way you enter the children let's move on to the next section wages and filing status and typically you enter each party's wages on a basis which is per year per month whatever basis is easiest for you in this case and you also have an option to enter wages on an hourly basis so if instead of entering $20,000 a year Shel is an hourly wage worker I just click this check box and the software will default in the current minimum wage for your state and 40 hours a week and put the weekly wage automatically in the gross wages section and if the person is earning more you can simply enter that if the person is working fewer hours a week you can enter that and each time you do you will see the gross wages updating you can also enter wages from another employer and you can click this three dots or more info to drill down and enter special things such as wages that are not subject to FICA or Medicare and that completes the information about entering wages next we have a section for wage like income this is several kinds of wage like income including child support and maintenance from prior relationships unemployment compensation Public Assistance bonuses commissions tips Etc and for each item you enter that on a monthly basis If instead you know it on an annual or some other basis you can click this calculator icon and you can enter the number annually you can also enter a year-to-date amount click okay and that amount will carry into the field that you are currently on there's also a column for specifying that an item is not taxable and that column is checked for the rows that are not taxable under federal tax law there will be several lines below that for the entry of wrin income and often below that there will be lines for social security income that is received by a child on account of the retirement death or disability of a parent this is also known as derivative Social Security and this income is treated specially by many states for child support purposes so those are the entries you need to know about with respect to wage like income the next section is our final income section and this gives us an opportunity to enter other kinds of income interest income dividend income taxfree income rental income pension income and Ira income for all of these types of income there are two ways to enter it the first way is to enter it at the top and you can just enter the amount on a monthly basis and again on an annual basis or any other basis if you want to use the pop-up calculator and the second way is to enter it with the full item so for for example I can enter interest income here and I also enter the value of the item and here is where I enter the annual income from the item and divide that income according to the ownership of the asset now the benefit of doing it this way is that you are entering much more useful information you're entering an asset that will carry automatically to the state's financial affidavit and the software will automatically divide the income from the asset proportionally to the party's ownership in the item so later on you can come back and change the ownership in the item and the income will automatically change how it flows to be consistent with the ownership so really overall this is a much better way to enter income but if you're just doing child support and you want to be quick and dirty about it you can enter income in the top section so those are the income sections and now let's look at the deduction section this is going to be different for every state but it's typically going to include items such as child support and spousal support of Prior relationships as well as some method of calculating taxes sometimes you'll see worksheets and if you do you should definitely click those worksheets because they will have helpful information about filling in that item in your state let's go back again to the top level and Illinois has a section called add-on expenses for health insurance and dental insurance and child care in many St States they are called add-on expenses in many other states they are simply deductions however they're categorized you will find a way to enter them in this area of the child's SP guideline worksheet and in every case you will enter both for health insurance the total spent per month and a child's share now as with all the entries on this page once you make an entry here it will also carry to the state's financial affidavit so there's single entry in the software and that includes all the items that we've entered including the assets including all of the forms of income and including all of these deduction now the result appears at the top of the screen as you can see here in the cloud version of the software which is what we're looking at now in the desktop software it appears at the bottom of the screen and is always updated as you go to view and print the result go over here to the reports Tab and select the child support form to print the form you click the PDF link up here and the form will download if you are using the cloud version or it will be saved in the same folder as your file if you are using the desktop version let's go back to the client info tab where we enter the child support information and scroll to the bottom and we'll see two more sections that are useful in the child support context the first is child support to use in the budget report what if and financial statement now what is this about well we've already calculated child support but the software does more than calculate child support and prepare the financial affidavit it also prepares budget reports and does cash flow projections does property division alimony what if and so on and for all those purposes we need to know what child support number to use by default the software will use the calculated child support number but this section gives you the ability to say no I don't want to use the calculated number instead I want to use for my projections a different number which I will enter and the same thing is true with respect to spousal maintenance in some states spousal maintenance is calculated and if that is true the software will have calculated a spousal maintenance number and you can use that number if you check the box to do so but you can also clear that checkbox and then the software will use any number that you enter so you can see that entering child support in family law software is both quick and very comprehensive it allows you to very quickly enter the number in straightforward simple cases but also handle full detail of complex cases and that concludes the video on child support in family law software thanks for watching