Understanding Child Support

It is quite common for one parent to seek the payment of child support from the other parent upon separation, as parents have a legal duty to maintain their children even if they are not spending time with them. This means it is important for lawyers who advise clients on family law and financial matters to understand the fundamentals of how child support works in practice.

This course provides an introduction to how parents can seek (or challenge) child support payments. It provides an overview of the different aspects of the child support system, including:

• administrative assessments and the formula used to calculate child support in these scenarios;
• the circumstances in which parents can make a departure application to deviate from the formula used in the administrative assessment; and
• limited and binding child support agreements.

The course will also provide practical worked examples of how to calculate child support using a series of hypothetical scenarios.