Child support in Maryland is calculated based on the Maryland Child Support Guidelines. These guidelines take into consideration various factors in order to establish which party will be paying how much child support. Amongst these factors are each party’s financial situation, the expenses required of the minor child and the physical custody schedule of each parent. The premise of the guidelines is that “the child should be entitled to the same level of expenditures that the child would have received had the parents lived together.”
A request for child support can be filed with the Court by either of the biological parents of a minor child, whether the parents are married or were married in the past. Generally, child support will begin to accrue on the date that a request for child support is filed with the Court. However, the determination of the child support amount and which party will be responsible for paying child support is not made on the date the request for child support is filed. This means that once a child support determination has been made, the party responsible for paying child support will have to pay that amount beginning on the date that the request was filed with the Court. In most circumstances, this means that a party will have to pay child support that has accumulated during the time the child support determination was being made.
In order to help alleviate the accumulation of child support amounts during the course of a legal action, a party can request a Pendente Lite hearing to establish temporary child support. At the Pendente Lite hearing, a Judge or a Magistrate will take all of the factors into consideration and issue an order of child support to one of the parties. This order of temporary child support will remain in effect until a final order is rendered by the Court.
Modification of Child Support
Child support orders can always be modified at the written request of one of the parties involved in the legal matter. However, in order to modify a child support order the party that is requesting such modification must prove that there has been a “substantial change in circumstances” that warrants a modification of the Court’s order. The most common “substantial change in circumstances” involve a substantial change in the income of the party making the child support payments. There are other grounds by which a party can prove a “substantial change in circumstances” which are more complex and require the assistance of an attorney.