Child support may be impacted by remarriage in New Jersey. If you have any questions or concerns, continue reading and give our skilled Sparta child support attorney a call today. Our legal team is on your side.
Does the state of New Jersey have child support guidelines in place?
You will want to acknowledge that in New Jersey, there are specific guidelines that have been enacted to provide family court judges with a procedure to aid in the decision-making process for child support arrangements. The purpose of these guidelines is to attempt to determine how much of the parent’s net income was expended on their children before the divorce or separation and then use that number to help the children later. As anticipated, it will be more difficult to sustain two households with the same income that was used to support just one, however, the idea is that children should not be denied the same opportunities they would have had if their parents stayed married.
Note that this guideline for child support is considered to be valid in any situation. However, that presumption is rebuttable, demonstrating that there may be circumstances in which using the guidelines might not be feasible. The judge usually determines whether those cases exist and whether they supply a good reason to pass the guidelines.
It is possible to modify a support order if it has already been specified and you think it needs to be revised. However, only if situations have changed enough for a judge to decide that keeping the current order would not be proper. Usually, remarriage is one of these cases.
Is it possible that a new spouse’s income affects child support in New Jersey?
Usually, remarriage does not generally affect child support right away. Whether you, your ex, or both, have remarried, the new spouse is not bound to support your children from a previous marriage or relationship. However, the topic of remarriage gets a tad more complicated when new children arrive, indicating children born or adopted into the newly-formed family since these children are also legal dependents.
Formerly under common law, if you were paying child support, having a new child would not have been a good enough reason for modifying the support order. This is because it was thought that your primary responsibility was to the children from your previous marriage, and if you decided to have more children, that was no one’s problem but your own. However, this is no longer the case. Today, New Jersey child support policies list “other legal dependents of either parent” as a factor courts may look at when determining whether to change a support order. The rationale for this is that it is your right to start a new family, and your new children should not be refused the benefit of your income just because of your prior marriage.
To learn more about how remarriage can affect child support orders in New Jersey, continue reading and give our legal team a call today.
