New Child Support Calculator

Lillian recently attended a presentation for the New and Improved Child Support Guidelines that started July 1, 2013.  Kate Cooper Richardson, the Director of the Oregon Child Support Program along with the general counsel, Mike Ritchey presented the improvements of some of the administrative rules within the confines of the existing statutes (laws).  There was a committee that has worked a year to make these revisions.

Oregon requires parents to provide medical health insurance through private insurance if it is affordable and available.  Kate spoke on “cash medical support” and explained that one parent can be made to pay extra money to cover health insurance needs along with basic child support.  Many children are on the Oregon Health Care Plan which is a public assistance plan and they attorneys learned how to calculate cases when the Plan is involved.  Parents may agree to dual coverage, but if there is a disagreement on which parent covers the children, then the parent with the most parenting time chooses.  If a parent is only at minimum wage income, then there is no cash medical support if there is no insurance available.

In addition, the committee cleaned up the Child Attending School section of the calculator.  Now, if the child is 18 but is attending high school, then you calculate overnights.  With the old calculator you did not include children once they turned 18, which created difficulty because a lot of kids turn 18 their senior year.  Last of all, they included calculations to include a child attending college.

As always, there are rebuttal factors to pay less or pay more depending on the circumstances.  Lillian was pleased that Kate and Mike made the trip over from Salem to educate Central Oregon attorneys on the new calculator.  It really does seem like an improvement for Oregon families.