Newsletters

Role of Income Tax Returns in Determining Child Support Obligations

In order to properly determine a parent's child support obligation, it is important for the court to know what the parent actually earns. Tax returns reveal not only what a parent has historically made, but may also reveal amounts the parent has been concealing or if the parent is intentionally impoverishing him or herself.

Dispute Resolution for Child Support Awards

All states have child support guidelines that enable a court to calculate basic child support. While use of the guidelines is required, they do not cover children after age 18 or graduation from high school nor do they cover some of the extras that children want and need. At times, using a mediator may help parents work through the financial conflicts.

Criminal Interference with Child Custody

A parent who takes a child and fails to return him or her may be charged with a crime. There are state and federal laws that make it a crime to unlawfully retain, obtain, or conceal a child where someone else has lawful custody under an existing court order or where custody proceedings are pending.

Uniform Interstate Family Support Act

The Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA), exacted in 1996, provided a new framework for states to use in collecting child support where the child and the parent reside in different states. It made it easier for state courts to exercise jurisdiction in establishing and collecting child support.

Putative Father's Right to Custody vs. Natural Mother or Legal Parent

The changing nature of marital and other domestic relations in the United States, and concurrent changes in public attitudes toward such things as the status of children born outside of marriage, have been accompanied by an evolution in the manner in which the legal system treats a number of issues of family law. One group of these issues concerns the right of a putative father, that is, a man who is supposed or reputed to be the biological father of a child born to a woman to whom he is not married, or who claims to be the father of such a child, to assert his entitlement to custody of or visitation rights with the child or children who are subject to his claim of fatherhood.