Tennessee Child Support Guidelines Aim to Minimize Impact on Children

Brentwood family lawyer helps clients get the child support they need

After you navigate through the often contentious process of determining how you will share custody of your children after your separation or divorce, you then have to take on the issue of determining who will pay child support and how much will be paid. The child support guidelines in Tennessee have been created to minimize the economic impact on the children, ensuring that not only are their basic needs met but also that they continue to enjoy a similar quality of life as they did during the marriage.

I am Judy A. Oxford, an experienced Brentwood family lawyer, and I help clients understand their rights under Tennessee law and try to get the child support needed to take care of their children in the way that they would like. While Tennessee laws provide guidelines that determine support, some of these guidelines are open to interpretation, and there may be room for exception. I fight to show how those laws favor my clients to get the best child support agreement possible.

How is child support determined in Tennessee?

Many factors go into determining which parent gets child support and how much. Tennessee provides worksheets and calculators online that can help you arrive at a number. The factors that these calculations use include:

• How much income each parent has. Income includes salary and wages, commissions and bonuses, income from investment accounts, social security benefits, workers’ compensation benefits, personal injury awards, gifts, alimony from previous marriages, gambling winnings, and more.
• The number of days children spend with each parent each year
• Child care expenses related to work
• Health care insurance premiums for the child
• Educational costs
• Other special expenses, such as camps, music lessons, sports activities and more

Often, these calculations are not cut and dried. For example, you may need to fight to show that the cost of a therapy dog for your child’s anxiety is needed and that your former spouse needs to help pay that cost. That should be included in your support agreement. Or your former spouse may have received a huge inheritance that would improve your children’s quality of life if you still lived together. That inheritance should be considered in the support agreement.

I work with clients to find all the issues impacting child support orders, including uncovering all sources of income and making strong arguments for all expenses that should be shared between the parents for the children. I fight to try to get my clients everything they need to maintain their quality of life for their children.

Collecting back child support that you’re owed

Once a child support order is determined, your former partner must pay as directed. The only way to get out of paying that amount is to take the case back to court to try to modify the child support agreement.

If your co-parent is not paying as ordered, the issue doesn’t just go away. You have the right to collect every penny that was not paid – and there is interest of 12% per year on the back support.

There are many ways that the court can help you get the money you are owed. Some options include:

• Garnishing wages
• Collecting a state or federal tax refund
• Placing a lien on the person’s property

Punishments can also include revoking the person’s driver’s license, denying the person the ability to get a passport, reporting the debt to a credit bureau, or even ordering the person to time in jail.

I fight to get clients the money they are owed in the shortest amount of time possible. My goal is to get the child support you are owed with the least amount of legal intervention. That may include negotiation or mediation. If necessary, I’ll take the case to court and create the best argument for trying to collect what you are owed successfully.

Work with an experienced and committed Brentwood TN attorney to get the child support your family needs

Child support is too important to leave to the whims of your former partner – a person you couldn’t work with to save your marriage, so why would you trust them to work with you on creating a support agreement? You need an experienced Brentwood child support lawyer to take care of these emotional proceedings. Call me, Judy A. Oxford of Judy A. Oxford Attorney at Law at my Brentwood office today at (615) 791-8511 or use the secure online form to schedule a free consultation and start talking about your legal options.