We get a lot of calls from people who are already divorced who want to modify their spousal support or child support. Usually the person who is paying wants to lower it and the person receiving wants to increase it.
What normally occurs is that there is a change in circumstances such as a change in income with the parties or with regards to child support, they may be changing the custodial timeshare which affects the child support amount.
Regardless of the reasons, the first thing we always do is run the numbers through the court’s dissomaster software to get a sense of whether or not it makes sense to go through with the modification.
Every once in a while, someone will call and i will run the numbers for them and we determine that if they filed the modification request that it would have actually turned out worse for them. Sometimes is just does not make sense at that moment to file a modification and usually what we will do is tell them to wait until a certain event has happened and come up with a plan regarding the best time to file the modification.
If you have current orders in place it is always a good idea to have those handy so we can make an apples to apples comparison. We also will need to know what orders from what date we are modifying so the court knows which set of orders we are asking to change.
If you have any questions on whether or not it makes sense to file a modification for spousal support or child support, make sure to give us a call. We can prepare your motion and declaration, file it with the court and get your court date for you.