Recently a New York court threw out the divorce settlement in the case of David vs. Cruz because, despite the fact both parties agreed to ignore the formulas set forth by the Child Support Standards Act (CSSA), calculations of those formulas weren’t included in the settlement. Divorcing couples still have to fill out the NY Statement of Net Worth and all the other paperwork associated with divorce settlement even if they come up with their own support plan.
The law states that before parents can waive the child support calculated by the CSSA, they have to be presented with those numbers. This means attorneys still need to calculate state-mandated child support just so the parents can say, “No, we don’t want that.”
Frustrating? Sure. A waste of time? Maybe. Required by the courts? Yes.
Let’s be honest: collecting the information required to satisfy the state-mandated formulas governing New York State spousal support and child support is a huge amount of work for the attorneys and the divorcing spouses. Yet you better do it anyhow.
Of course if you use New York child support software you’ll find the process a lot easier. The state formulas can be calculated in a snap, printed out to be included in the agreement, and then completely ignored if that is what the parents want. The software also makes it easy to set up custom support scenarios and compare them to the state formulas.
One reason the state insists on this is it is possible for one parent to bully or trick the other into an agreement that is unfair. When both parents see the numbers calculated by the CSSA formulas they may realize their prearranged agreement is unreasonable.
It doesn’t pay to try to get around the law. Even if you think you’ve found a reason why you wouldn’t need to complete some of the paperwork, it’s not going to hurt to do it anyhow. New York family law software automates and speeds up the process. The attorneys are going to have to gather much of the information anyhow, so they might as well go through the motions just to protect themselves.
If you aren’t already using legal practice management software in your family law firm then download a demo of Easysoft Legal Software’s products to see for yourself how our tools help you serve your clients better.
