Massachusetts Divorce Law Monitor : Massachusetts Divorce Lawyer & Attorney : Nancy Van Tine : Burns & Levinson Law Firm : MA Divorce & Family Law : Massachusetts Divorce Law Monitor

Hi there;

In any support situation, it seems the support is always too much for the person paying, and never enough for the person receiving it.  With child support in Massachusetts, the payments are formulaic.  The Child Support Guidelines were revised a year ago, and here is an update on the revisions.

In most cases if there are children who fall under the guidelines (generally under 18 if not in school and up to age 23 if in college), the parent with whom the kids are living should be receiving at least some support from the other parent even before the parties hit the court system.  The guidelines make it easy to determine the amount, but even with a formula there can be disagreements and the recipient may need to ask the court to intervene.

Commonly, child support is paid on the same calendar as the one used to calculate and receive your pay check.  The calculation is weekly, so if you are going to be paying monthly remember there are 4.3 weeks in a month; consequently, a $100 per week order results in a $430 per month payment.

If possible, it is best to have the support paid either via payroll deduction, or direct deposit.  That way no one needs to remember to do it, or to nag when it doesn't get done.  NEVER, EVER have the payments delivered via the kids (and do NOT, as one person in my experience did, write "Blood money for the Bitch" on the memo line on the check)!

The person who pays child support also pays the taxes on it.  This usually means that in the final agreement, there can be some consideration of this in the allocation of the dependency exemptions.

Best,

Nancy

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Hi there!

I hope you stayed dry this past weekend.

Just when I think legal advertising can't get any worse, a colleague directs me to the litigation over the "Lawyer of Love."

I have been watching the health care debate with great interest, and I found this analysis very illuminating.  The Taxgirl is talking about intact families of course, but the same considerations are applicable to divorced families as well.

Finally, here's a story sponsored today by the letter "H" and made possible by Judge Terence T. Evans in the case of U.S. v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857, 859 (7th Cir. 2005).  Here is a portion of the actual transcript and a footnote.  

The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden's response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies.”

To read the complete transcript of this case click here.

Best,

Nancy

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Hi There,

From taxes to Alec Baldwin giving advice on how to divorce  - this week's selection really is a very mixed bag.

My favorite tax blog had a funny post on how not to do your taxes.

I have watched Alec Baldwin's very public display of parental ineptitude with some amazement, but I was even more amazed to hear he had written a book on the topic.

Texas has a constitutional amendment which defines marriage as between one man and one woman but apparently if you are gay and married elsewhere you may be able to divorce in Texas. However Gideon Alper, another one of my favorite bloggers, had a more in depth analysis which is very interesting.

And since death is even more inevitable than divorce, I am including a link to a very informative piece on what to do when a family member dies.

Best,

Nancy

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Hi There,

Since quarterly taxes are due now, the IRS is on my mind, and so I thought that a post on taxation might be apt.

The tax implications of divorce is an area where questions come up consistently.  Taxes affect both support and property division. The rules and results are very different in gay and heterosexual divorces.

In a heterosexual divorce the division of property will be tax free provided the lawyers structure the pension division properly. Child support is always taxable to the payor spouse and tax free to the recipient.  Alimony is deductible from the income of the payor spouse and includable in the recipients income.  There is a very good piece in TAXGIRL (one of my favorite blogs) that goes into more detail.

If you are gay and getting a divorce the situation is very different ( and this is one of the reasons Martha Coakley is suing the Feds) Gideon Alper, a law student writes a terrific blog and he had a post on this as well.

Suffice it to say whether or not there was a third party in the breakdown of your marriage you cannot ignore the taxman who will be the third party in your divorce.

Best,

Nancy  

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Hi there!

Divorce and taxes aren't quite as inevitable as "death and taxes," but with one out of three marriages ending in divorce it is close.  One of the blogs I subscribe to is called taxgirl and I just read a very good article there on divorce and taxes.

One thing to remember if you are part of a single-sex, married couple is that this does not apply to you as DOMA precludes the IRS as treating you as married.

Stay cool,

Nancy

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