Hi, Tim Blankenship here with divorce661.com, and in this video, we’re talking about spousal support and the amount of spousal support that you’re going to agree with your spouse. Now, what I want to talk about specifically is what amount are you going to use. When it comes to spousal support and you’re in agreement with your spouse you don’t have to use the guideline amount of spouse support.
The courts use a system call the DissoMaster and that’s what we’ll calculate spousal support and child support and when it comes to child support the child support has to be the minimum amount of child support that the calculation refers too. So, it says 1,000 dollars in child support, your child support order has to be at least 1,000 dollars or you need a non-guideline order and then that’s subject to court approval and you need to attach a copy of your DissoMaster.
I’ve talked about that in previous videos but for spousal support you do not need to have a specific amount, it does not need to meet guideline for instance, I was helping someone with a calculation for both child support and alimony, they had a specific amount total they wanted for both child and spousal support, let’s say it was 1,000 dollars and the child support came to 350 let’s say and the spousal support came to 1,000 so, the total was the total of those 2 values.
So, they didn’t want it to be that high, they wanted it to be a total of 1,000 so what we did was the child support would be the guideline amount and the spousal support can just be the difference and to total the difference. So, let’s say it was 350 dollars for the child support, you can then make the spouse support 650 dollars to have that total of 1,000 even though the calculation showed spousal was to be 1,000 you don’t have to use that amount.
The courts are not going to force the spousal support guideline amount, they’re only going to enforce the child support guideline amount. Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Hope you’re having a great day, we’ll talk to you soon.
