Navigating Separation: Luke & Sally’s Child Support Journey
Luke groaned as he pulled the strip of packaging tape across the last box and heaved into the truck. He looked around his formerly family home and sighed. He saw the tree, that he would no longer be able to build a treehouse in for his child. He saw the patio, where he would no longer cook meals on the BBQ for his family. He saw the bedroom window where he and Sally had put together their child’s nursery, where he would no longer put their child to sleep and kiss them goodnight.
Alas, Luke and Sally had made the difficult decision to separate. It was no-one’s fault; it just happened, as these things do.
Sally opened the door and stepped out onto the street to greet Luke next to his car, packed full of his possessions.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Sally asked politely.
“Motel across town” Luke replied, sheepishly. “Still a few more days until I can move into my flat”.
“Oh”.
The pair averted their gaze from each other and stood in silence for a moment that felt like eternity.
“We need to discuss child support” Sally blurted out, suddenly. Luke stared.
“Ch-child support?” he repeated. “Do we need to talk about this now?”
“I mean, kind of” Sally stammered. “I can’t really afford to keep the house and pay the bills. I have an idea of what I think you should pay me, but do you want to take a couple of days to think about it?”
“Sure” Luke said, before climbing into his truck and turning on the engine. He did not look back at the house in his rear-view mirror – it was all too fresh.
He didn’t expect to have to think about child support so quickly but of course, Sally would need the money to care for their child. Luke understood that. He thought about the figure that Sally had proposed. How did he know it was fair?
He quickly got into researching child support. First, he went onto the IRD website, where he found a handy calculator. He put in the details and got a sum that wasn’t too far off what Sally had proposed. After that, he and Sally jointly instructed their old lawyer to draw up a private child support agreement for them.
“A private child support agreement is a great way to create certainty around the arrangement you have come up with” their lawyer explained. “As long as you are both aware that, at any stage, either one of you can go to the IRD for a formulaic assessment instead. This will involve the IRD taking a sum, that they have calculated, directly from Luke’s wages and sending it to Sally as child support”.
Luke and Sally thanked their lawyer and left the firm. They were still great friends, and now that the issue of child support had been sorted, they could focus on being great co-parents for their child.
But single life brought its own challenges for Sally…
