The Court Shall Put In Orders for Prospective Adjustments
Video Transcribed: Adding Prospective Adjustments In Your Child Support. I’m Oklahoma Lawyer James Wirth. We’re doing a series related to Oklahoma child support, and Oklahoma child support guidelines and this video are about perspective adjustments.
This is statutory. You hardly ever see these in any child support cases, but if it’s favorable to you, you’re definitely going to want to look into this. It is statutory as part of the guidelines and the court is supposed to go with the guidelines. There’s a presumption to do so. The court does so in almost every case, but sometimes they leave out parts if you don’t bring them up and fight for them.
One of those could be the prospective adjustments, and I’m just going to read what it provides in the statute. This is Title 43, Section 118(D)(f) and this is what it provides.
Says, “The court to the extent reasonably possible shall make provisions in an order for prospective adjustments of support to address any foreseen changes, including but not limited to changes in medical insurance, childcare expenses, medical expenses, extraordinary costs, and the satisfaction of the jointly acquired debt of the parents used as a deduction from the gross income of the parent.”
So it’s interesting that this has shall in it, “the court shall put in orders for prospective adjustments,” but only where there are “foreseen changes” coming up. So like I said, we hardly ever see these in child support orders.
If there is a change coming up, if you know that the children are in daycare and that’s going to stop at a certain date, then you should have a separate child support guideline for after that date and have the order automatically change at that point so you don’t have to go back to court and do a modification.
Similarly, for other circumstances where you know that there’s going to be a change in the future. That’s something that can be done and it should be utilized so you don’t have to keep going back to court any time something like this changes to file for a modification, which can be time-consuming and expensive to do.
So look for those opportunities to do prospective adjustments, and you can fight for those and note that the law says that you shall do those where you’ve got foreseen changes. So if there are foreseen changes, push for that.
If you’ve got any questions about how that may play into the facts or circumstances of your case, you’re going to talk to an attorney about that privately and confidentially. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
