An amendment to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act will result in major alterations to the way child support is calculated. The law, which will go into effect July 1 and which is already being taken into account by some courts, will have a particular impact on non-custodial parents since it brings a new way of calculating how much each parent will be required to pay for their children’s expenses.
The main change the law brings about is that courts will now have a broader view of what can be considered an income source for both parents involved in the child support order. Additionally, courts will now consider how much of the financial weight each parent was responsible for during the marriage and how much time each parent wants to and can spend with their child after the divorce is finalized.
One of the benefits of the changes in the law could be that child support battles will become less adversarial, without the primary focus being money. In the past, custodial parents have fought non-custodial parents about the time they want to spend with their kids, and they then have pursued additional child support. In this case, a custodial parent might realize that fighting the non-custodial parent’s desire for more visitation time might cost the custodial parent a significant amount of money.
The hope is that the law will help both parents continue to have a positive emotional bond with their children by working together for a fair solution. A parent who is in the middle of a child support dispute might find the guidance provided by a family law attorney beneficial as the new law goes into effect.