Just starting the process...child support question

[psirasmom]

Morning all! Well, we met with our attorney yesterday to start the process of filing (about $30K of CC debt....time for a fresh start)...

My question to you all - my attorney bypassed my question (not intentionally) - will child support I receive for 2 of my children be counted towards our income? I was under the impression that it would not be (support, not income), but am a little nervous because this would put us about $2,000 above the Chapter 7 median income.

Thanks!

[anonymuse]

I'm not sure to the answer to the child support question, but I'm sure someone here will provide you with an answer shortly.

Just because you are over the median income, it does not automatically force you into a Chapter 13. As long as you show that you don't have any disposable income left over (and with having 2 kids, that should be pretty easy to show), you will be just fine.

[psirasmom]

Thanks for the response - lol, we have 3 kids....so DEFINITLEY nothing left for disposable income (formula, diapers....ugh)

[Topaz]

Hello, We are waiting for for our 341 hearing date right now. I collect child support for 2 children, which does NOT come close to our median. To answer your question, Yes, my child support is listed as income in our paperwork. I am in Michigan, so i'm not sure if different states have rules about child support. My laywer put it this way, as assets we put Clothing, Food, Ect...which is used for the kids, so our income also has to show where that money comes from. Hope this helps, Linda

[lrprn]

From http://family-law.freeadvice.com/chi...yments_tax.htm

"...under Federal income tax law, regardless of the label that is used, most child support payments are a tax neutral event, while most support payments provided to the other (former) spouse are deductible to the payer and are ***included in the taxable income of the supported spouse****." (my emphasis)

From this excerpt, it looks like your support payments should count as income as you say it does currently in your forms.

One of the very few good things to come out of last fall's BK law changes is that child support is now much harder to discharge through bankruptcy than it used to be. That means that no matter what your ex-husband may do, he won't ever be able to discharge this obligation to your children by filing bankruptcy, so you can count on this income continuing into the future much more than was possible before last October.