Our original agreement was to just pay it outside the court system and adjust the amount owed according to actual cost. She balked at that a while ago and wants it to go through CSEA. The amount when we agreed was $ 200 a month. 50 for ins, 50 for school lunch, and 100 for clothing. Since she is going to run it through CSEA it just becomes $ 200 per month, period. So if anything goes up, CS stays at $200. She kind of shafted herself on that one.
Background: She makes more than I do and we share time almost exactly 50-50 so there really should be no support. Her ins is better and cheaper than mine so we chose that route. With the lunches the school does an auto deduct so we took last years total amount deducted and my half came to $ 50 a month. With the clothing, she has typically done most of the clothes shopping so we decided she would just keep doing it and I would kick in $ 50 per boy per month. The other option is both of us shop and we reimburse based on receipts. Thats too hard to track.
Clear as mud now?
I was thrown by your comment that she shafted herself when in reality it's your kids who are in need of lunch, insurance and clothing. Kids grow fast and need lots of stuff. I think she was right to do it the way she did, but it will be hassle to go back to court and get increases.
Me 57/H 58 M36 S 2.5yrs R 12/13
Let me give up the need to know why things happen as they do. I will never know and constant wondering is constant suffering. Caroline Myss
The hassle is what I was referring too. In a perfect world we could have handled it like adults. When ins. costs go up, I up my check by half that amount. I get that she was protecting herself by going through CSEA but I also know that I will never miss a payment and always put the boys first. Now I have to pay the county $ 288 a year that could have gone to the boys and she will have to pay an attorney every year to get the adjustments done.
M42 W40 T17 M15 S13 S11 BD 7-14 A discovered 7-14 WAW moved out 10-3-14 D final 2-23-15
Doing well today rpp, thank you. Not much to report. WAW did have a pretty decent talk about how to set up CS and how to adjust it. The conversation ended with her saying she could see the benefit of doing CS outside of CSEA and she has to weigh the flexibility of my idea with the security of her idea. I left it up to her. Once she decides on that, our papers are ready to sign. I am not pushing to settle, but I need some relief from the stress of not knowing how this is going to turn out. As of today I am very satisfied with the agreement we have. If we end up with a D through the courts I will likely lose parenting time, have to sell investment properties, and have to shell out lots of $ for an attorney to fight it out.
M42 W40 T17 M15 S13 S11 BD 7-14 A discovered 7-14 WAW moved out 10-3-14 D final 2-23-15
bdub, why would you lose parenting time? Just curious. I thought most courts these days leaned towards 50/50. Are you sharing 50/50 now? (We are not. I have been thinking about offering H one more day, though.)
50-50 is in the agreement but nothing is signed. I was saying that IF she files for D instead of signing dissolution the standard is every other weekend and every other Wednesday. I have been told the court leans towards 50-50 but I don't want to take the chance and I dont want to fight it out in court. We are sharing 50-50 now and the dissolution spells it out almost to the hour.
The last issue we have to hash out is how to adjust CS. Without going into a tremendous amount of detail: we based support off of the cost of the boys ins., school lunches, and clothing costs. I think we all know whats going on with the cost of insurance so we cant just include a clause that says CS goes up 3% every year. Working through this I thought it would be easier to just keep CS out of the CSEA all together. We could then sit down on September 1 with the new insurance cost for the year, and the new lunch cost for the year, and adjust CS.
If she choses to go through CSEA she will have to hire an attorney and petition the court every year. Seems wasteful to me.
M42 W40 T17 M15 S13 S11 BD 7-14 A discovered 7-14 WAW moved out 10-3-14 D final 2-23-15
bdub, I'm sure all this paperwork and negotiating is a pain, but you seem to be handling it well. Right now, H is still paying all my bills. I don't just mean providing the $, I mean physically opening the bills and writing checks or making online payments. I am not ready to start dividing assets and taking over financial responsibilities. I can do it, of course, I just don't want to right now!
