Child Support Modification

Even though a judgment is supposed to be a final order in your divorce case, child support is still modifiable through a post judgment action. That is, it can be changed after the judgment to reflect "guideline child support." Basically there are two main reasons someone might want to modify child support after a judgment.

Change In Income

The first reason is that a party's income has changed. This could mean that somebody's income has increased or decreased or perhaps someone lost their job. If the payor had an increase in income, then guideline support might increase, but if they lost their job, then all of a sudden one party has no income and cannot pay anything toward the child. At times a job loss might even shift the balance and the payee becomes the payor. In the case of job loss though, usually there is unemployment income and the payor remains the payor, but the person's income is less, and the payments will be less. If the payee spouse has an increase in income, then the guideline amount might also be lowered.

Change in Visitation and Time Share

The second reason is that the respective timeshares of the parties has changed. This occurs quite often. Many times when a judgment is entered, the children are quite young and one party, say the mother, has most of the time and dad has alternating weekends with a weekday dinner visit. Over time the kids grow older and the parties may have worked out a more equal time share. On the other hand, maybe one parent actually sees less of the children than the timeshare the parties had worked out at the time of the divorce. Since the relative time shares have changed, support should also be changed to reflect the actual time the children spend with each parent.

In short, since child support is based upon the relative incomes and timeshares of the parties, then a change in either factor could lead to a change in the support order.