Illinois Court Denies Appeal of Child Support Modification

 Posted on October 27, 2017 in Child Support

After a court has established child support, parents are entitled to a review and possible modification of the payments. Illinois allows child support modifications in three situations:

• When three years have passed since the child support was enacted or last modified;
• When there is a significant change in the needs of a child; or
• When there is a significant change in the income of one of the parents.

A recent Illinois appellate court case involved a father requesting to lower his child support payments. The court found that the father had proven a viable reduction in his income and rejected the mother’s argument that the support payments should remain the same.

Case Details

The two parties divorced in 2013, and the mother was appointed the primary residential parent of their three children. Using the child support law at the time, the court ordered the father to pay 32 percent of his net income towards child support, as well as set amounts for medical expenses and extracurricular activities. Initially, the payments were $1,700 per month based on the father's job income. However, the mother successfully petitioned to increase the support payments because of additional income the father received from a side business selling computer parts. In April 2015, the court set the child support payments at $4,053 per month.

In January 2016, the father petitioned to lower his child support payments, stating that he no longer received income from his side business. The father said that he had stopped operating the business because the declining revenues did not justify the time he was spending on it. The mother contested the petition, claiming that the father ended his business in bad faith in order to avoid higher child support payments. The trial court found in favor of the father and changed the support payments to $1,828 per month.

Modifying Your Child Support

As of July, Illinois has changed how it calculates child support payments to an income shares model. The change applies both to newly settled divorce cases and older settlements that are eligible for child support modifications. If you are paying child support under the previous model, it may be to your advantage to modify your child support using the new model. However, the new law does not automatically allow you to request a child support modification. A Kane County family law attorney at Goostree Law Group can tell you whether any circumstances qualify you for child support modification. Schedule a free consultation by calling 630-584-4800.

Source:

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/AppellateCourt/2017/2ndDistrict/2160885.pdf