Chicago Child Support and Collections

Chicago Child Support and Collections

By: M. Scott Gordon

In Chicago, when a judge orders you to pay child support, payments are usually taken directly from your paycheck. The court will send an order to your employer, requiring them to set aside the child support ordered from your regular wages. This process is known as garnishment, or "withholding". Judges will determine the amount of child support from the guidelines in the statute.  The percentages of a parent’s income that will be garnished are 20% of your net pay if you are supporting one child, or 28% for two children. If you are supporting three or more children, the portion of your pay that will be set aside increases incrementally, up to 50% for six or more children. It is important to note that these percentages are "guidelines", and judges have discretion to increase or decrease them as they see fit, although in most circumstances Judges stick with the guidelines amounts.

Paying Child Support in Addition to Debts

If you have any other outstanding payments that have gone to collections, including medical, credit card, and other bills, a collector will most likely not be able to get an order requiring your employer to garnish additional wages if they are already taking out child support. This is because Illinois’ Income Withholding for Support Act sets a cap on wage garnishment, valued at 15% of your gross pay, or 15% of your net pay over $371.25 per week, whichever is less. If your take home pay is less than that amount, your wages cannot be garnished for payments of other debts, although child support payments could still be taken out of your wages. This 15% limit interacts with child support minimums in such a way that debt collectors cannot stack further garnishments on top of the 20% or more that you are already paying to support your children.

This limitation also applies to previously existing debt. If you are ordered to pay child support, but you already have a garnishment applied to your paycheck for an old debt, the child support will take precedence over the debt. In the vast majority of situations, this will prevent a creditor from garnishing your wages. Child support payments always take first priority under Illinois law.

There are circumstances in which a debt, incurred either before or after you begin to pay child support, could be collected via wage garnishment simultaneously with child support payments. One way that you could be forced to give your wages to both types of payment is if over 25% of your gross pay is deducted for taxes. This would result in a situation where you would be left with relatively less net pay, when compared to your gross pay, which would allow for 20% of your net pay to be taken for child support, with some money left over to be garnished for a debt before the 15% of gross pay cap is reached.

Chicago Child Support Lawyer

For help understanding the complex interactions that affect your wage garnishments, you should consult with a knowledgeable child support attorney. If you suspect that your paychecks are being improperly garnished, we can help get to the bottom of the matter, working with your employer, creditors, and a judge to make sure that your economic rights are being respected. Contact the office of M. Scott Gordon & Associates for advice and representation on your child support matter today.

 

Child Support and College Tuition

Child Support and College Tuition

By M. Scott Gordon

In Illinois, child support laws require that both parents support their children. In general, noncustodial parents in a  divorce or parentage case have an obligation to support their children until they turn 18 or complete high school (where a child is still in high school after turning 18, the parents still will be obligated to pay support up until the point that the child turns 19 years old or graduates from high school). In other cases, such as those where a child cannot support himself or herself, or in situations where a child is disabled, the support obligation can continue beyond the child’s eighteenth birthday.

But what about children who turn 18 and go off to college? Is there any kind of child support obligation in Illinois? Illinois law states that both parents must help with college expenses. Yet a recent article in Slate suggests that child support for college students is quite a controversial matter.

Rising College Costs, Rising Child Support Costs?

A recent case in New Jersey reverberated in states across the country. A college student, Caitlyn Ricci, used the legal system to get thousands of dollars from her divorced parents for college costs.  The issue in that case was that a child sued both divorced parents; in Illinois (currently) only one "ex" can sue the other "ex" on behalf of a child for college expenses.  But it sometimes comes as a shock to parents that they can be forced to pay for college.

When judges in Illinois and throughout the U.S. rule that noncustodial parents must contribute to their children’s college expenses, are they changing the nature of child support? Is it actually becoming an obligation that doesn’t, in fact, end at the age of majority? And how much money can parents be responsible for once their children go off to attend various universities and liberal arts colleges?

In-State Versus Out-of-State Tuition

Are parents obligated to pay for any college? Or do these costs only extend to the lowest-cost option?

In-state tuition expenses for public universities are much less than the out-of-state expenses for private (or even public) colleges and universities. Do divorced parents have an obligation to help pay for either option? Or must children choose the lower-cost school if they want to have financial assistance from a parent? In general, courts tend to look at each situation on a case-by-case basis, although many Judge's will limit a parent's obligation to the cost of, say, the University of Illinois.

We’ll need to wait and see how cases like these continue to proceed in Illinois. In the meantime, if you have questions about child support, contact an experienced Chicago family law attorney at M. Scott Gordon & Associates today to learn more about how we can assist you.