Do I Pay Utah Child Support when We Share 50/50 Custody?

When parents share 50/50 custody, they assume there won’t be any child support.

This makes sense because you figure that if you share everything equally, there’s no need to pay child support.

Only problem is that’s not how it works in real life.

Child support doesn’t belong to a parent. Instead it belongs to the child.

This means neither parent can negotiate away child support, and everyone’s bound by Utah’s child support guidelines.

How Utah Child Support Works at 50/50 Custody

Child support is straightforward.

The more parent-time one parent has in relation to the other (i.e., the farther you are from 50/50 custody), the more child support will be paid.

On the flip side, the closer you get to 50/50 custody, the less child support will be paid.

Once you get to 50/50 custody, child support usually becomes pretty minimal, but there will be something, unless both parents make the same amount.

Here’s an example of what I’m mean: Husband and Wife have 1 child. Husband makes $6,000 gross per month. Wife makes $3500 gross per month. If they shared 50/50 custody, Husband would pay $141 per month in child support.

(Note: let’s assume Wife had primary custody, instead of 50/50 custody. If that were the case, Husband would pay $631 per month in child support. Pretty substantial difference.)

So, just because you share 50/50 custody doesn’t mean you won’t pay child support. You very likely will, unless incomes are the same.

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