The Brief

Navigating Child Support and Maximizing Your Case

• Mike Khader • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Filing for child support? Listen for key tips and expert advice from Wilson Soto, Esq. an experienced matrimonial lawyer. 

We discuss the intricacies of child support, imputed income, and importance of filing petitions promptly in New York state. Wilson provides comprehensive advice on how to handle child support cases, including the necessity of documenting expenses, serving the noncustodial parent, and understanding income potential. The discussion also touches on special cases such as underreported incomes and using creative legal methods to ensure fair child support orders.


Key Takeaways: 

  • importance of timely filing for child support and details necessary for filing a petition
  • the use of social media for evidence and importance of keeping thorough records
  • responsibilities parents may have towards their children's college expenses

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Mike:

This is the brief. I'm sharing lessons from years in the courtroom, representing parents and couples on custody battles, co parenting, mental health, finances, and more. After 20 years as an attorney, I'm also bringing true war stories from the courtroom to empower you with solid and straightforward advice. I want to help you become a better partner and parent and be here anytime when you need it the most. Hello, everyone. And this week's episode, you're going to hear directly from our guest, Wilson Soto. So are you curious what imputed income is or how the courts determine imputed income? Are you curious about what you need to start a child support case? Or what about if your income goes up or down? What to do. So there are tons of information on this episode that I hope you find useful. And don't forget, click on the link below for a consultation. Hello everyone. And thanks for joining the brief with my cater. This week's episode is something that's very interesting, and it doesn't matter if you're in Supreme court or family court. If you have a child support issue, today's guest is the person that you want to listen to. So get your pen and paper ready. I would like to introduce you to Mr. Wilson Soto. Not only is he an attorney, but he's a dear friend of mine spanning over decades. Wilson, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Wilson:

Mike, it's a good to, good to be on just a little something for your listeners. I've been. Practicing I think 26 plus years of those 26 years of spent 26 years doing matrimonial law, which deals with all of the issues of the family. It's custody, child support, paternity, division of marital assets. But one of my sub specialties within my specialty is the area of child support. So I'm happy to be on board and I'm happy to enlighten your listeners on these very important issues.

Mike:

Thanks so much, Rosa. And you know, Thanks so much. You know, only because you opened the door, you know, after this, we got to schedule another episode with a different topic. So thanks again. I know that. Hold on

Wilson:

Boyd. Hold on Boyd.

Mike:

Thanks. Let's hop right into it. We receive calls all the time or emails or referrals from previous clients, you know, where the custodial parent is trying to get child support. You know, what are some tips? How would you counsel your client on if they're either in the middle of a child support issue or trying to file for child support against the non custodial parent?

Wilson:

Well, one of the most important things to remember is that New York is one of those states that does not look back. too much when you're looking to get something. So if you are a parent that is seeking child support, you must get your petition in the court as quickly as possible. The courts are not permitted to look back. So don't dilly dally. If you know you require child support to raise your child, don't wait months, don't wait years, and then finally say, well, I'm gonna go to family court, I'm gonna file a petition, and hope that it rolls back to whenever you had the need. No. It rolls back from the date that you file. So that's a very important part that a lot of people miss. People come into the door and they say, well, he hasn't paid me anything in two years. You have an order. No, but I'd like to start one. Yeah. But all those two years that you left behind, you forgave those. We don't have a look back period like some other States. So that's very important. You want to make sure you get into the door as quickly as possible in any scenario, dealing with child support, including I lost my job. I can't pay. Okay. I want to bring it down. Get your foot in the door is one of the most biggest issues that people have in terms of getting the actual relief that they want.

Mike:

That's a very good point. So for all those listening, potentially child support obligations start on the date of filing. So if you're contemplating it, you're literally. Throwing money out the window and taking food off the table file as soon as possible is the first takeaway

Wilson:

just a couple of days ago. I did a consultation with someone been separated for eight years, not received a single penny. I said, you just threw away eight years of child support now that she's in financial need and financial distress and needs it. She's like, well, can I get all of those eight years in the past? You can't get it. You only get, as you said, from the date that you file your petition. And so, that's an important part. You know, the other important tip is you want to keep tabs on if you're the custodial parent, on who's the non custodial parent. You want to try to be able to reach them, right? To serve them with papers, to basically have the court have jurisdiction over them. In some way, shape or form so that your order can be valid. And sometimes people will separate, they'll go down their own paths. They don't want to talk to each other. Maybe there's no parental access with the child and they lose track of them. And all of a sudden, now that becomes an obstacle sometimes to getting jurisdiction over them. So you always want to keep a little bit of intelligence, you know, in the back of your head as to where the noncustodial parent is, so that if the date comes that you do want to do something, you At least know where to get them served or how to get them served.

Mike:

Now, does it matter where a custodial parent. files, can they file in family court? Can they file in Supreme Court during the divorce? How does that work?

Wilson:

Well, it all depends. If there is a divorce action already pending, then family court being an inferior court cannot entertain a child support petition. Everything must be done in Supreme Court. Family Court is divested of jurisdiction, as they say. But in the absence of a divorce proceeding, then yes, you can go to family court and file your petition there for child support. Even if you're married, there may be occasions where somebody is married, they're not willing to or they're not in the position where they want to begin the process of divorcing. Maybe they think their marriage is salvageable, but they still need some, some child support to pay the bills in the home. So even though you're married, you can go straight to family court, file a petition. And family court is a very people friendly kind of court for routine kinds of things. It may serve quite a few people. There are other cases where maybe you need the expertise of an attorney.

Mike:

Yeah. You know what? It's funny to say about the family court. I remember when I used to file the cases, right? Divorce, Straight up to the 10th floor for those who know, you know, Supreme Court, but however, there are a handful of cases. Once I assess, there's times that I've handled the child support aspect in the family court and the custody aspect in family court. We get final orders and then we go file for the actual divorce already been divided. It's sometimes it's

Wilson:

more

Mike:

cost effective.

Wilson:

Yeah, for a lot of people who may not have the financial resources to envelope everything in a divorce, I use that same strategy. I say, listen, work at piecemeal, handle child support in family court, handle custody in child support. If those you believe might be the bigger issues, and then go for the divorce and deal with the division of marital assets and things of that nature. That's a very good strategy, especially if you're pretty much on a budget and things are a little tight because family court is a people's court. It's more friendly to people who don't have a legal experience and a legal background.

Mike:

So you know, you go to the clerk's window where you get the paperwork, you feel literally fill it out. What type of paperwork or what type of information should the parents seeking child support have ready to go?

Wilson:

So it depends on the status of you, the child and the non custodial parent. So if you are married, you want to have your marriage certificate, because children born during the marriage are presumed to be children of the marriage, you would like to have the birth certificate of the child, even if the child was born in the marriage. But there are some occasions where a child is born before the marriage. And in those cases, it's very important to have a birth certificate, which shows who the legal father is. And so you want to make sure that your birth certificate has it. It's possible on some occasions that a child is born, a birth certificate is issued, and someone acknowledges paternity thereafter. But they've never gotten an updated birth certificate. So in that situation, you want to go to the city clerk's office. You want to get your birth certificate because the court doesn't have jurisdiction to order child support unless it's convinced that this is the legal father and that's where the birth certificate is very important. You also want to have information if you can, with regards to where. The non custodial parent resides very specific, you know, apartment number. I see too often they'll say X, Y, Z, uh, you know, one, two, three main street, but you go look at main street. It's a 20 unit apartment building. There's an apartment number, so they can't get them served. So you want to be very specific as to where they live. The other thing you want to try to provide them is a place of employment. For the non custodial parent, because when you do go to court, and if you get issued an order, they already have the information to do an income deduction order against the employer. So you don't have to deal with the hassles of collecting it. The support collection unit will do it directly for you. So those are the things that are important. Birth certificate, marriage certificate, information regarding the whereabouts of the non custodial parent and information regarding place of employment.

Mike:

And that's very basic, but it gets the process started. Many times I'll get phone calls or I'll speak to people and they say, and for this example, the father, I'm not sure where the father works. He has a cash business or, you know, he works off the books. How would you counsel somebody going through that issue where. You know, you know, they're working, you know, they're living, they have an apartment or a house, but there is no income execution because they're self employed or cash based.

Wilson:

In today's more mobile society, you know, where you live sometimes can be a mystery because people can work remotely from almost anywhere. We've had our fair share, especially during the COVID, uh, situations where people took up residency somewhere else where it's cheaper, and we don't know where they live. Um, how do we serve them? Because the law requires that for due process services, you got to get them served with the petition. Thankfully, there are mechanisms that the court has available to provide alternative service. So basically as attorneys, I would have to do a little bit of due diligence to try to find, let's say the father. abstracts, vehicle registration, voter registration, publicly available records. And if I satisfy the court that I can't find the address, then I can seek an alternative. Maybe I don't know where dad lives, but I know where his mom lives. And I may know that mom has a relationship with him. I can go to family court and say, look, here's my due diligence. I've looked for him. Can't find him. But his sister lives here. His mother lives here. Can I serve him through some substitute? No problem. Mr. Soto serve his mom. I'm sure she'll give him a copy. There are other occasions where you don't have any family members. This trend started about 20 years ago in Supreme Court, where now you can serve somebody through Facebook, through a text message, through an email. So long as you can convince the court that that is the Facebook page, or the Instagram page, or the phone number, or the email address of the respondent, in case of father, then the court will say, you know what? Can't find him? No problem. Send him an email. That's good enough.

Mike:

I started dealing with more situations like that during the COVID. Like you said, people could be, as long as you've got an internet connection, the last few years, you know, courts, after I gave an affidavit of due diligence, we went here, we went here, isolated. I was like, but judge, we know he's active on Facebook. So, you know, they would authorize, send them on the messenger or through email. Again, other great advice nowadays with social media, you know, while people can minimize their footprint on social media, it is hard to hide. on the internet

Wilson:

nowadays. It is. So the great thing is that social media has allowed an outlet from which the court can say, all right, we don't know where he physically lives, but we know how to reach him. That's been a great tool for the court having jurisdiction over someone.

Mike:

Thanks for pointing out. So folks out there, if you're trying to find, you know, the parent, you're trying to serve them, document everything that you've been trying to do. Friends, families, last known address, last known job. And if you tell the court you tried, but you know, they're active on social media, or you have a working email, the court may allow you to serve by email. So keep track of all your attempts. Thanks for bringing that up front. So because we're talking about social media and I don't want to put the carriage before the horse, but it kind of goes back, how can social media be used when people are under reporting their income? But on social media, you see they're living this five star luxury life.

Wilson:

You know, I have a pretty interesting case right on that point. I was doing a child support case against someone who was a disc jockey and had a huge Instagram profile for his DJing. We found out based on on his Instagram, like where he was DJing. We also found out all of the different places where he would be a guest DJ, where he'd show up and do his work. So we began to send out flurries of subpoenas to all of these places. We also were able to get another DJ who did this for a living, not a part time thing, to come in and testify as an expert that based on the locations where this person was DJing, based on the experts. own work in these locations as a guest DJ. This is what someone of this nature could earn. Mind you, all of the income that he was getting as a DJ was pretty much cash receipts from the door. So there was no paper trail. Even though our subpoenas came back, they're like, no, you know, that's he's paid by some other. It was always a flurry of nose and nose and nose. But yeah. Our expert, our expert DJ was able to testify. I see his Instagram account. I see all the places he's at. And based on the volume of work, this is what he should be earning. And the court was convinced that is a good number. And the court imputed that number. As what this DJ could be earning. And we got a child support award based on that number.

Mike:

That's very good. And you use the magic word impute for the basic term. Am I, if I describe impute as if the court is going to assign and give a number, is that, is that the best way to describe what imputed

Wilson:

is? So basically the, the, the family court has one of three ways from which it could determine what your income is for the purposes of paying child support, or basically what it, what it, what it should be, you know, the first way is what's your actual income and that for most of the people, that's very simple. It's your W2, it's your pay, your pay stubs. It could be a 1099 if you're a realtor getting commissions. And those are easily verifiable. Those are, are the majority of the cases, but then there are situations where somebody has a lot of cash based income. And in those, the court has a different method that it can use. It can use your past earnings history. If there was a documented history, there's a term that's commonly used in family court for noncustodial parents called RAID, a recently acquired income deficiency, because it will bring in great money. And so they get this petition for child support. And they've recently acquired an income deficiency, right? No income, right? Yeah, yeah, significant. Right. So so now the court is I says, Oh, you know, I used to make all that money, but judge but now I'm in McDonald's flipping hamburgers. You know, so I don't make that kind of money anymore. So the court says, Well, you know what? What's your income potential? What's your income potential? If you had a profession, if you had a particular calling, or let's say you were bricklayer, right, and you were with a union, the court could look back at your earnings history and say, Well, look, you have the ability to earn this much. And it could be just based on the profession, or it could be based on past earnings history. On those occasions, the court will then impute income, it says this is your potential, Therefore, that's what I'm going to impute upon you and establish as your pay in order to establish child support. The third method, when let's say you serve somebody, you get good service. The court has jurisdiction. They don't show up. You have no idea what they earn. You have no idea what their income is. You have nothing to give to the court. How does the court establish child support? The third method that the court has is a needs based order. It says, mom, what are your needs? How much do you pay in rent? How much do you pay in food? What are your transportation expenses for the child or the clothing expenses? And you go down this list and based on the needs of the child, the court will issue an order. So there are a lot of different ways provided that the court has jurisdiction for the court to establish some order of support. And just as a little tip, one of the common tools that I, that I use very often when somebody has recently acquired income deficiency, but I know that they have a profession. There's a publication, a federal publication by the United States Department of Labor called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. I'm pretty sure you've heard of that book. Yeah. Great resource. It used to be a book, but now it's really on the internet, right? But it's, it's a statistical analysis by the federal government. Department of Labor. What do bricklayers earn? What do pilots earn? What does a head chef earn? What does somebody in the electrical trades earn, right? So, if I see somebody might be underreporting income, or I don't, can't establish income, I go to that book, it's a federal publication, and say, look, here it is, Judge, This person has this particular profession. This is the medium wages for somebody in the Northeast. Judge says, I like that number. I'm using it. I have tremendous success with those.

Mike:

Yeah. Anyone could go there. Just type. It's very good. Yeah. And I've done that before. You know, what I always do is take the age of the person person is 30 years old. You know, uh, you know, they graduated such, so they're not entry level. And according to the department of labor, I give the, I print it out and I give the link. That's why I smiled when you said that, because,

Wilson:

you know, I think it's one of the most, it's one of the more underutilized tools for practitioners who may not be very involved in child support. You know, you have to look for clever, uh, legal ways to establish what the income is so that the court has a basis from which to determine child support. So there's, there's a ton of different ways, but, um, again, you know, if, if you go to court, you want to have some idea. of what the noncustodial parent is earning and where they're earning it from. And if you don't, and you find roadblocks because they have their own business or they have a cash base, then at that point, then they need to see a professional that's going to really give them the tools and the resources they need to get it done.

Mike:

Okay. Now, Wilson, have you ever used So you have a again, for example, the father was playing fast and loose with income unemployed, I'm injured. Have you ever used social media, their posts as to prove how they're living?

Wilson:

Oh, sure. You know, there's a lot of things that may not be reflective on your financial statements. It could be, you know, trips, vacations. Very often you'll find somebody driving a nice fancy car. But when you check with Department of Motor Vehicles, there's nothing in their name. And we find, okay, when we run the plate and we figure it out, okay, it's your brother's car, you got a cash based business, you put it in your brother's name. So all of these social media things, whether you're on a boat, whether you're on a fancy car, whether you're taking fancy vacations, the court can take into consideration as to whether or not the finances that you do submit to the court are credible. You know, the question is, well, how do you drive a fancy car like that? Take fancy vacations, have all these assets that are not listed on your, on your financial disclosure affidavit. The moment you destroy the credibility of the respondent. It's game over for them. You know, now you have carte blanche to really get a good, a decent number, but you got to destroy the credibility and social media is one of those ways.

Mike:

You're right. So if you're lying this time, what else you're lying about is

Wilson:

yeah, my favorite line is when they, when they lie on their income tax returns, you know, and then I'm doing my closing argument to the court says judge, if the respondent father was willing to lie to the federal government on his tax returns. You don't think he'll lie to you in this courtroom? A court looks at that and like, Oh, you make a good point there, Mr. Soto, we got to attack the credibility when you see that it just doesn't add up.

Mike:

That's correct. You know, I had a case where the father was a barber, you know, and business is slow, people are not coming in. People are, you know, just every excuse you could think of, but you know, on his Instagram and Facebook, living it up, driving an M six going to Dominican Republic, Cancun. And ironically, everything was either in the mother's name, you know, sibling's name and legal, you know, legally. However, I just was able to convince the judge, judge, this person is not living on a 30, 000 salary. They're getting the benefit. You know, who goes on vacation four times a year, has a brand new car, is living in a very exclusive neighborhood. Judge, you gotta impute this. You know, once we showed the pictures and again, we attacked his credibility on the road, you know, the judge, uh, pretty much saw what

Wilson:

he was going to do. You're absolutely right. The court, the court is vested with the mandate. to do what's best for the child. And so understanding that mandate, the courts will look at this kind of stuff and say, doesn't add up. You know, you're reporting the 30, 000 lifestyle, but you're living a lifestyle of 000. So the courts in those cases, when they see that the credibility is not there, it's under reporting, you control your own income, they have a wide latitude. A wide degree of discretion to bump up your income by imputing income on you.

Mike:

Good. Now, as we know, income always goes up and down and, you know, we got the rate, right, the intentional, I'm just not working during the, this custody proceeding, but there's also like legitimate, you know, they were temporarily hurt, hours were cut. And, and, and we know what's legitimate. You could just tell through the fact. How much of a drop would you need an income to make a modification for a downward or upward modification?

Wilson:

So there was some recent amendments to the Family Court Act, in particular, section 451, which basically outlines to everyone who gets a child support order, that there are basically three circumstances upon which you can modify the order. The first one is if there's a difference of 15 percent or more of the income from the last time that you had an order. So even if it's the following year, it could be a legitimate situation where the father's working for a company and they go bankrupt, they go belly up, he loses his job, right? He's got a 15 percent or more drop in income because now he's got to go work for a different company with less money. So there's the 15 percent difference in income. You also have the ability to modify just on the passage of three years time. So from the time you got your initial child support order, you just wait three years without anything other than passage of time, you can go back to family court and say, Hey, I want to update my child support in accordance with the income that exists now, you know, at this particular time. And the other one is a kind of a catchall, which is a substantial change in circumstances. In essence, an unanticipated substantial change in circumstances. Most of the ones that I deal with may not necessarily fall on an income based level, but it could be, I'll give you a perfect example of one we did some years ago. The child suffered an accident. As a result of the accident was, was wheelchair bound. So the mother's expenses for childcare increased dramatically. They had to put ramps in the front of the house. They had to equip the vehicles. So the expense of rearing this child who is now confined to a wheelchair increased dramatically. Substantial change in circumstances has nothing to do with dad's income going up or mom in income going up or down, but the circumstances upon which childcare was necessary changed so that catch all can capture a variety of different scenarios where it's an unanticipated change in circumstances, which would really warrant a modification of child support.

Mike:

And what are the percentages? So, so we're talking about income or deductions and such. So you have the person in court, you have an idea. How does the court, what numbers do they use? What percentages?

Wilson:

This is a little bit of a primer on how does the court calculate the amount of child support. And let's assume for this argument that nobody's hiding income, both parents are W 2 wage earners. And there's nothing unusual about this scenario. So in that situation, the custodial parent is the one that's entitled to child support. The non custodial parent would be paying a percentage of their income towards child support. Now, depending on how many Children you have, that percentage changes. So in a nutshell, the way I like to explain it to most people is take the gross income of the non custodial parent. Let's assume for argument's sake, it's 100, 000 out of that slice off about 10 percent from the top. That leaves you with 90, 000. Now, if there's one child, multiply that by 17%. If there's two children, you multiply that by 25%, three children, 29, 31, and then 35 for five children beyond five children. It doesn't matter. And if you got more than five children, you got more problems than just exactly, exactly. But it's basically, you know, you take the gross slice off 10 from the top, which is for a federal FICA, Medicare, Social Security tax, you know, a couple of little nuance credits that you get, take that other remaining 90 percent multiplied by 1725 2931 or 35%, depending on the number of children. Now, that'll get you to the basic, presumptively correct amount of child support. But there's more to the analysis than just basic child support. What happens if you have a child that is in need of child care because mom has got to go to work or mom is going to school? Well, the court is obligated to provide for child care reimbursement based on the needs of the child while the mom is working. And how do they do that? It's usually done as a percentage of income. So it, let's say in a scenario where no mom is earning a 70, 000 and dad earns 30, 000, well, in that scenario, she pays 70 percent of the childcare. He pays 30%. It's on a proportion, what they call the pro rata share contribution for the childcare. The same thing goes for healthcare expenses. If the child is covered by insurance, but some of the things are not covered. Usually I see I wear, I see some dental that's not covered. Sometimes some cosmetic surgery is not covered. And in those the same pro rata percentage is ordered by the court to be paid. And that is in a nutshell, the three basic things, your basic child support, childcare, and unreimbursed health care.

Mike:

So what I want to ask about childcare, and, you know, I get calls many times. Yes, because I'm working, you know, uh, you know, after school care, but it's a relative. That does the babysitting, they pay that relative for buying for food to buy, you know, take care of the child, make sure dinner's cooked. Can they reimburse if the babysitter, the aftercare is a relative, or does it have to be in a registered daycare facility?

Wilson:

So the whole thing hinges upon whether it's legal, right? So it is completely legal for your cousin, your neighbor, a friend to provide childcare. You don't need a license. You don't need any, any special kinds of permissions. And so the courts, when they look at this kind of stuff, are looking at the reasonableness of the amount that's being charged for the time that the child needs the care. And as long as it's reasonable, it doesn't really matter whether it's your sister, It doesn't matter whether it's your neighbor, it doesn't have to be a licensed child care provider, as long as the cost is reasonable. Now, there are some courts that take a slightly different view when it's a grandparent. And so, those can sometimes become a little bit tricky because, for instance, I'll give you two scenarios. On one of them, you know, the grandparents are retired. They stay home all day, and they're retired, and they're into gardening and just chilling out around the house. And you have a single mom who leaves the child, is living with the grandparents, and leaves the child in their care while she goes off to work. You know, some courts have the belief that if the grandparents are not sacrificing income to care for the child, that they shouldn't be reimbursed for it, that grandparents would care for a child irrespective of whether they're getting paid or not. But if you have a different scenario, where you might have two or three children and you have a grandparent that was working and decides not to work so that they can care for the grandchildren. In those, it's very clear, very obvious. The court will say, as long as it's reasonable, you're I don't care if grandma's providing for the care, but on the other scenario, some courts are sometimes a little hesitant or may not give like the full amount because they're saying there's no sacrifice. They're already home. You're talking about one child, what grandparent would charge their child to care for their grandchild. So there's a little bit of a, of a, of a discretionary gap in those scenarios.

Mike:

And that's good when you say the reasonableness. And I always tell when I counsel clients. It's reasonable. You're giving them money to go take them to McDonald's or to go get the snack or, you know, to keep them occupied. It costs money, you know, for those 3 4 hours. I always tell them have backup just in case the Zelle to show it or a receipt to show it. But if it's a reasonable numbers, the courts will certainly entertain it. And most likely.

Wilson:

And very important when you when you're faced with having to pay someone that you know, for childcare, you want to document as you said, those payments, you want to send it by some kind of app, you know, cash app, Zelle or Venmo, maybe pay them by check, and have some kind of documentation, you don't want to ever have to go to court a year, two years later to justify how you paid in cash, but have no, no receipts or anything, nothing of substance. So it's very important, even if you're paying your mom to pay it in some kind of documentable way, you So that you can get reimbursed for it.

Mike:

I know that we're wrapping up, but I just wanted to ask this and this, so, and this next question has to do with an unmarried couple. What about extracurricular activities? So, you know, the, the baseball camp, the football camp, can a parent. get extra funds for that for the acts after school sports?

Wilson:

It's a good question, because it's always a bone of contention when you're dealing with these issues, because you could have a scenario where a child routinely goes to a summer camp away camp, you have a scenario where a child is engaged in piano lessons, is engaged in, you know, weekend football in a league or something. Unfortunately, The Child Support Standards Act does not provide for extracurricular activities. Um, you are not obligated to pay for them. Piano lessons, no. You know, little league football, no. Uh, sleep away camp, no. There is a little bit of a caveat though. And the caveat is when that extracurricular activity can be deemed a substitute for child care. So I'll give you a perfect scenario, which we see sometimes, you know, parent gets out of work late around six and there's an afterschool program, but it's an afterschool basketball program where the kids play basketball. You know, they play intramural sports and stuff like that. Sure. It's extracurricular. in nature, but it's really a substitute for child care, because in the absence of that program, you wouldn't need child care. And as long as the cost is reasonable and commensurate with what child care would be, courts are going to say, no problem, pay it. But it has to be commensurate, and it has to be, in essence, a substitute. Sleepaway camp is not a substitute. Piano lessons are not a substitute. But in some circumstances, you can substitute an extracurricular for child care.

Mike:

And then Wilson, the last question. So we're talking about when they're early stages in childcare, what about college, right? You know, so again, in our scenario, this is not a married couple, you know, they have a child in common and the child is in high school colleges around the corner and anyone that has kids, no college, you know, college ain't cheap anymore, can the custodial parent bring the non custodial parent and get help with college?

Wilson:

Very interesting, um, New York in this scenario is in a deep minority, the overwhelming majority of states. and child support, usually at a graduation from high school, many times at 18, but usually not beyond 19. The overwhelming majority of states have nothing in their books to allow a court to order college. So New York is in the minority in this. New York can permit a parent, if they're possessed of sufficient financial resources, to pay for college expenses. Something that the overwhelming majority of other states don't have in their books. We know the importance of college, right? We've benefited from it. I would venture to guess that New York is kind of in the forefront of this. Because children need more than just a high school education. Aside from our moral obligation, New York imposes a legal obligation to provide for college expenses, except there's a little bit of a quirk because it can only do so until the age of 21. Which kind of only gets you into about your junior year, maybe depending on where you were born and when you started kindergarten, it might suffice for a four year degree. So that's a little bit of a quirk in the law that yeah, the court can order college, but the payments must stop when the child hits the age of 21. Obviously, the parents can agree to anything else and go further than that.

Mike:

Yeah, a lot of times I put in a divorce and a stipulation because 21, which is statutory. What we'll do is we'll put, if it's past 21, if the child is registered full time college level class receiving credit, then the non custodial will still be

Wilson:

responsible. And that comes from the moral side of us as human beings, right? Not the legal side. It comes because we want to provide for our children. We want them to do a little bit better than we do. So you're absolutely right. We do that very often in matrimonial actions. Where we say, I know the law says 21, but I'm willing to go to 22, provided that my kid is in college and going to get an essence of bachelor's degree. And that's, that's a very common thing that most parents will do for the benefit of their children.

Mike:

Wilson, you were great. So for all those that tuned in, start early, file right away. You don't need much. Try to get as much information about, uh, the non custodial, where they work or their last known job, their full address, number three, document, you know, receipts, bills, invoices, paid and unpaid, if you feel that the non custodial is hiding money or under reporting or is putting things in relatives or friends name. Listen, social media is a free, useful tool. Screenshot the cars, screenshot the dinners that they, it's almost amazing what people put on social media. Wilson, you know, to expose,

Wilson:

you know, what they come into court and say, listen, I'm, I'm on a McDonald's budget. And meanwhile, they're eating in some big steakhouse in the city. That says a lot.

Mike:

Wilson, if somebody has any questions about what you said, how can somebody reach out to you?

Wilson:

Well, my office is in Scarsdale, New York. And my phone number is a 914 378 9000. You can call my office and I tell you, anyone who calls my office and says, I was referred by Michael Cater and tells my receptionist, I was referred by Michael Cater, I will do the consultation for free. I normally charge. I'll give you a courtesy consultation. I'll give you all the advice that I can during that sitting.

Mike:

Listen folks. So you heard that free consultation. If you mentioned my cater Wilson, I really appreciate your time. And I'm gonna, you know, we'll definitely have you again, uh, concerning again, the family law and custody and matrimonial it's broad, it's complex here in New York, and I would love to have you back on again on another topic. so much for taking time out of your schedule. and and to speak to our audience. Pleasure to be with you. Thanks for listening. This is Mike Kader and I'll help you and your family navigate custody disputes or divorce matters with your best interest first. You can book a free consultation with me and learn more by following me on Instagram at Mike J. Kader. I've also included a link in today's show Tune in for our next episode of The Brief coming next week.

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