Child Support in North Carolina

Into the lates 1980s, support for children was addressed in each county in NC? Wake County, Johnston County, Durham County? and so on, on a case-by-case basis. In other words, if the parents could not work out an agreed upon level of child support, a judge would hear testimony about the incomes of the parents and the needs of the child and enter an order.

The statutory and case law in NC on child support presumes that parents have a economic responsibility towards their children. This such an important issue to the states and the federal government, that child support agencies have been established, including in North Carolina, that seek to establish parental child support obligations and enforce those obligations once established.


Some would say the case-by-case analysis by the courts created very different results case-to-case, judge-to-judge, and county-to-county. No doubt, it did.

Also, once these orders and judgments were entered, enforcement became increasingly difficult in our increasingly mobile country. Imagine the prohibitive expense to a single parent with a court order for child support who might be chasing payment from state to state as the ex-spouse moved between jobs.

The federal government got involved and essentially, with the power of its federal purse strings, compelled the states to establish support establishment and enforcement mechanisms. Now, in Wake County for example, we have a child support enforcement agency in downtown Raleigh. Even though there have been threats of cuts to these programs in the past, they are going strong.

In addition to establishment and enforcement agencies, there was a push to streamline the calculation of child support?. enter the North Carolina Child Support Guidelines.

In North Carolina, the Conference of Chief District Court Judges was charged with promulgating guidelines. Like many other states, the Conference seized upon an income shares model, assessed the numbers, and came up with aformulae to calculate child support based on a grid of presumptive needs based on income levels and the number of children and the adjustments based on such factors as the difference in income between the parents, the cost of child care and health insurance. Other adjustment factors were added in such as extraordinary expenses and to cap it off judges were given flexibility to vary from the guideline-suggested child support if fairness so dictated.

Child support and child custody issues should be addressed with a qualified family law attorney.
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